Moving to: m/AskMbin!

When you buy shares in a company, that money doesn't just disappear until you sell your shares again-- it goes to the company you bought shares in. That was the original idea of the stock market: it was supposed to be a way for companies to basically crowdfund their business ventures by selling shares. The idea was they could use the money they raised by selling stocks to invest in the company so it could become profitable on its own, then they'd reward the stockholders for helping them by giving them a share of the profits.

So in other words, reddit is so desperate to IPO because now that the VC money is running dry, selling shares is their only option left to raise a ton of money fast. They're hoping that will buy them more time to figure out how to become profitable on their own. (Or at least delay that time until Spez can abandon the company with his multi-million dollar golden parachute, leaving some other poor shmuck to deal with the inevitable bankruptcy.)