IPO/stock market was not mentioned anywhere in the post. It’s much more typical to be acquired than to go public.

Sorry, you’re right. Confused the two for a second.

You're the only one that mentioned the stock market at all, so I would question if you know the difference you're alluding to here.

As others pointed out, nobody else mentioned sale by public offering.

But let's go with it anyway, why is that different? It's just a way to have multiple owners, more easily very many of them than you could manage in a private sale. So why is the stock price not the actual value people see that slice of the company as providing them?