The thing is, who a company’s “users” or customers are and what their product is fundamentally changes when they go public.

For Reddit, their customers have been advertisers, and their community members have been their users. Their product has been user eyeballs they can sell to advertisers. And prior to adopting ads, their product was an open community forum and content aggregator, and their customers and users were the community members.

After going public, however, their customers will be shareholders, and their product will be share value. This fundamentally changes how a business operates, and what it sees its purpose as.