This is a story of why flows are often a bigger driver of valuation than fundamentals. The supply/demand dynamics in the private markets create a persistent, valuation-agnostic bid for top private companies: an order of magnitude more capital pointed at companies than the amount they can productively absorb. Those same businesses, if they were to go public as SMID cap stocks, wouldn’t have nearly the same demand given the massive share of passive capital (which primarily benefits large cap stocks) and the other alternatives available to active managers. Retail participation in private markets will only exacerbate this dynamic. Top private companies will benefit from a new valuation-agnostic bid: the one from 401(k) savers every two weeks. Similar companies that trade publicly will see no such incremental demand. The phenomenon of companies staying private longer isn’t really one about compliance overhead or a liquid currency having less value because of a hawkish FTC. It’s about companies positioning themselves to benefit from more attractive flows in private markets than public ones.