Taking a company public is a long and arduous journey that usually takes two years to complete.

Patrick Grove of Catcha Group breaks down the most critical steps that a founder or leader should take to set up their eventual IPO for success, including how to pick the right exchange and which key hires to have in place.

Ready to start planning for your IPO? Download this handy cheat sheet outlining the critical steps for a successful public listing.

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Unlocked: Patrick Grove was produced by Tech in Asia Studios as part of our new Originals video series. Any views expressed within do not necessarily reflect the opinions of or indicate guidance from Tech in Asia.

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Transcript:

The IPO is a beginning of a long, beautiful journey and it’s when you’ve finally stepped up to the big leagues. And if you look at all the big companies today, whether it’s Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla, these are all public companies.

But most importantly, these are all companies that became massive after they IPO-ed. They didn’t IPO and become smaller, they IPO-ed and became dramatically bigger.

So I think if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to take your company to the next stage, and you want to be big and massive, and dynamic, and disruptive, then an IPO is not an exit, an IPO is actually the beginning of the next chapter of your company’s life.

I’ve been super fortunate to be involved in six IPOs, so I’m Mr., like, pro-IPO, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, I think historically, you’ve seen entrepreneurs stay private rather than IPO for a number [of reasons]. One is they don’t know how to IPO because it’s not easy. It’s complicated, it’s time-consuming, and it’s costly, and people often go down the easier path. So number one: staying private is often easier.

Number two is people sometimes are uncomfortable or unaware of the scrutiny that comes with being public, right? Hence the word public. All your information and everything about your company are available to everyone in the world. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there that don’t want that information out into the ecosystem. They want that information private and, hence, the word “stay private.”