I wrote about it towards the end of the article a little bit.
There are a lot of interests in the IPO. perceiving "leaving money on the table" assumes the most important interest is the company's balance sheet.
Institutional investors would shy away from stock that had no potential upside to it, so getting this price right to attract the right kind of buyers (long term buyers decrease volatility ) but still maximize the cash to the company needs a process to find equilibrium rather than a maximizing strategy.
Ultimately the shareholders benefit more from a positive momentum on the stock rather than optimizing the price at the moment of the IPO
I think your overall thoughts on not-always-aligned-interests is really key to understanding the IPO process (or really any process..): when a company goes public, it's really a product being sold by the underwriter's sales team, and upside is a (the?) key factor in making the sale.
In addition to that, a company's goal in any fundraising effort should not necessarily be to get-the-most-money possible, but rather to balance: (1) getting the amount of money it needs to accomplish its goals/objective over a given period of time vs. (2) the control/ownership it will have to give up in exchange for that amount of money.
There may be times where the company achieves that optimization but there is still "money on the table" which is fine since the company achieved its objective, which is the definition of success.
There are a lot of interests in the IPO. perceiving "leaving money on the table" assumes the most important interest is the company's balance sheet.
Institutional investors would shy away from stock that had no potential upside to it, so getting this price right to attract the right kind of buyers (long term buyers decrease volatility ) but still maximize the cash to the company needs a process to find equilibrium rather than a maximizing strategy.
Ultimately the shareholders benefit more from a positive momentum on the stock rather than optimizing the price at the moment of the IPO