Every valuation is a story that someone agreed to believe.
In private markets, that story gets told in a conference room, signed by a handful of investors, and then repeated for years as if it were a fact.
Nobody has to test it. There is no daily quote, no crowd of skeptics pricing the risk in real time, and no moment when the number has to survive contact with strangers.
That arrangement works fine until the company needs public money.
Then the story stops being a story. It becomes a price, and the price gets set by people who were not in the room when the promise was made. Some companies survive that translation with their dignity intact. Plenty do not.

#survive #price #nobody