Editor’s note: John Cambier is managing partner at IDEA Fund Partners in Durham, an investor in 17 companies (one acquired), 11 in the Triangle.

DURHAM, N.C. – In the past couple of years, an unprecedented number of venture-backed companies have closed financings of $100M or more at valuations above $1 billion. This phenomenon has led to grumbling by some—most notably, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen—that the “IPO is dying” and that individual investors are “missing out” on what used to be great opportunities to ride exciting young companies from their IPOs onward.

His reasoning is that stifling regulations make it costly and burdensome to run a company with publicly-traded stock. He names Oracle and Microsoft as two examples of companies that went public early and provided a great return for early public shareholders, but likely would have gone out much later in today’s environment.

While the large private financings are happening (selectively) and the regulatory burden for public companies is greater today than it was 20 years ago, the dire situation Mr. Andreessen describes just isn’t reality.

The full post can be read at ExitEvent.