Nah, not quite. Public markets are red hot right now. Nasdaq is ~20% above all time high of '99 madness. IPO always was and always will be the best financing option down the road for great companies, Stripe included. Yes, there is a bit more regulation with SoX and such, and yes it's a bit more painful than it used to be back in the days, but some regulatory overhead makes not one iota of difference to a great company. Sure, middle of the road companies in VC's portfolios may not find IPOs as attractive as they were before and will exit through M&A.
As you can see from CEO's post a few above, these guys are nowhere near done, they have their work cut out for them in terms of expansion and accordingly a ton of growth prospects ahead. From that standpoint and because private funding is plentiful and attractive for a company of this profile, I agree - IPO is probably not the best choice at the moment [but you can read above post between the lines that they are heading there]. You see, in an IPO, they would need to sell a bigger chunk of the company to have a decent liquidity in the stock and private markets allow them to "right-size" the rounds. Also, the whole IPO process is a lot of work and bit of a pain and could be distracting from day-to-day business of running a rocket ship.
Yes, quite. Look at this chart[1] and animation [2].
You will find that there are almost no IPO's below 1B$ in the 2010's. What used to be the default option, became: stay private as long as you can. If Stripe is worth 3B$ now, what stops them from going public? Same for AirBnb (13B$ est) and Dropbox(10B$ est).
When looking at those charts, I would disregard the relative density during the IPO madness of '98-00, time when IPO was the default option for companies that should have never been public, to great retail investor fanfare, massive speculation, and ultimately untimely demise. Also, take out outliers (say Facebook and Google), periods of recession, adjust for inflation and all of the sudden, they don't look that much different (perhaps if you also squint a little or close one eye).
These charts only include tech, but there are other industries, too. For example, we had an explosion of IPOs in oil & gas LPs in the last couple of years. How is it not burdensome for a $250mm oil and gas LP to go public but it is for say $1bn tech company?
Make no mistake - there is nothing that would stop any of the companies you listed from going public (and I am pretty sure they will all be public in due time). For now, it is a matter of focus and choice. They all have access to great terms in the private markets. Given access to capital, it has always been more advantageous to stay private for as long as you can. For one, it allows you to focus on metrics that are relevant to your business (say nights booked or payments processed) and growth and not be distracted by GAAP measures and what equity analysts think you should measure. Also, there is no "stock ticker" distraction and a bunch of other reasons.
This all changes a bit when they get into the acquisition mode, as having liquid acquisition currency in form of publicly traded stock helps make bigger and bolder moves. It's also nice to give some liquidity to early employees as well.
While this dynamic may suck for growth oriented retail investors and mutual funds, I think it works well for the companies in question and at the end of the day - that's what really matters.
As you can see from CEO's post a few above, these guys are nowhere near done, they have their work cut out for them in terms of expansion and accordingly a ton of growth prospects ahead. From that standpoint and because private funding is plentiful and attractive for a company of this profile, I agree - IPO is probably not the best choice at the moment [but you can read above post between the lines that they are heading there]. You see, in an IPO, they would need to sell a bigger chunk of the company to have a decent liquidity in the stock and private markets allow them to "right-size" the rounds. Also, the whole IPO process is a lot of work and bit of a pain and could be distracting from day-to-day business of running a rocket ship.