Since 2001, companies have had an average age of 11 at the time of their U.S. IPOs, compared with 5 at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 1999-2000 and 7 to 9 in the previous two decades… Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen sees all of this as a sign of trouble… In Andreessen’s opinion, overregulation is largely to blame. CEOs of startups are choosing to stay private to avoid having to comply with Regulation FD, issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, both of which helped new disclosure requirements on public companies, he said.
Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-24/ipos-get-bigger-but-leave-less-for-public-investors