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\u201cIt\u2019s not cheap to go public,\u201d concedes CFO Steve Cakebread, echoing the oft-repeated refrain that founders and CFOs confront when considering the prospect of selling shares in their companies to the public.

Concessions aside, it will come as little surprise to Wall Street and private investors alike that Cakebread\u2014a seasoned finance leader who has taken public such companies as Salesforce, Pandora, and his latest firm, Yext\u2014has come not to bury IPOs, but to praise them.\xa0

And 2020 might be the year when founders and CEOs are prepared to listen. \xa0

Certainly, few of Cakebread\u2019s CFO admirers are likely to question the finance leader\u2019s keen sense of timing. In fact, more than a few will likely be making room on their bedside tables for Cakebread\u2019s soon-to-be-released The IPO Playbook: An Insider\u2019s Perspective on Taking Your Company Public and How to Do It Right (Silicon Valley Press, 2020).

\u201cWith all of the macroeconomic and pandemic issues going on, there have been as many\u2014if not more\u2014IPOs through August than there have ever been in the past couple of years,\u201d says Cakebread, signaling an optimistic note for U.S.-listed publicly held companies, which have seen their numbers cut in half over the past two decades.\xa0

The coronavirus, it turns out, might in part be the antidote for Wall Street\u2019s IPO blues. As COVID-19 spread, many companies made greater operational discipline and efficiency top-of-mind, which in turn led to the adoption of governance practices more commonly used by publicly held companies.

What\u2019s more, they began doubling down on culture, a trend that has prompted IPO-minded founders to more thoughtfully expose the connective tissue between public ownership and social responsibility.

\u201cMost founders want to create opportunity both for themselves and for the people around them, and this happens only when you go public,\u201d explains Cakebread, who notes that the social responsibility aspects of going public were a big incentive for each of the companies that he took public, including Salesforce, where he and CEO Marc Benioff identified a number of benefits.

\u201cMarc and I talked about it a lot before we took Salesforce public. The discipline of going public makes your organizational governance better. It makes companies more socially responsible, and this was a big item for him and for me. It grows careers and spins off other technology companies,\u201d continues Cakebread, who joined Salesforce as employee #67, when the $17 billion company was eking out a quaint $20 million annually.

According to Cakebread, public firms operate with a certain rigor that privately held firms struggle to match\u2014and VC-backed and private equity\u2013owned firms can at times miss the big picture.

Notes Cakebread: \u201cI actually find it tougher to work with VC boards because all they care about is the numbers. They don't care about the opportunity so much.\u201d

To Cakebread, the IPO process is important because it allows CFOs to realize their role as visionary storytellers with the ability to articulate a narrative that educates others about where the business is headed and what opportunities are being pursued.

\u201cYou\u2019re always going to have one number out of whack every quarter, but if the sell-side research people understand the underlying story, they can teach the longer vision to their investors and say, \u2018This is an upsy-downsy quarter, but long-term, this business is intact,\u2019\u201d he observes.

Asked how diminished listings of U.S. public companies have likely impacted industry over time, Cakebread points to the dynamics of wealth creation.

\u201cThis has meant less access for most of us, and I think that this is helping to create this disparity between people who are very wealthy and people who aren't because they can\u2019t get access to the market,\u201d says Cakebread.

\u201cThis is a challenging topic for a lot of people, but I personally believe that access is...