“You a millionaire yet?”
Not quite.
I had some money now, provided the price stuck.
That was my answer when a friend congratulated me on Shutterstock's initial public offering.
The company began trading that morning. Years of building a private business had become a public price anybody could watch move. The infrastructure work did not feel different, but the ownership around it suddenly had a number on a screen.
I was happy. I was not pretending the number was permanent.
Stock that cannot be sold yet is not cash. A first-day price is not a guarantee. I had been around enough systems to distrust any result that existed for only a few hours.
Still, it was a huge day.
People had been working toward it for years. The filing in May made the plan public. The first trade made the outcome visible. For employees, it also turned a future possibility into something concrete, even if it came with plenty of restrictions and uncertainty.
Shutterstock had grown from one founder's image collection into a global marketplace. I had joined while the technical operation was still small enough for the problems to arrive directly. Now the company was public, the S-1 was out, and people outside the building could see what had been built.
My email did not turn philosophical. I made a joke, added the condition about the share price, and asked whether my friend was finally ready to move to New York.
That sounds more like me than a victory speech would have.
The company had gone public.
I had a little more money on paper.
New York was still the better part of the pitch.