The main difference between public and private companies are that private companies are owned by a 100 individuals and are not traded publicly. Public companies are traded and have zillions of shareholders. Public companies also are responsible to the Securities and Exchange Commission whereas private companies are not. Private companies are not responsible for reporting financial data which means that they do not need workers to report the financial data. Public companies must report financial data which means they do need to hire workers to report that data. I think that a good difference between them would be the amount of people who own the company. Private companies save money because they do not have to hire an accounting team to report the financial data but this could be bad because is someone reporting the data or is the data just not being reported? An example of a private company would be IKEA and it is a very successful company. A successful public company is Microsoft.

I recently read an article in WallStreetMojo with discusses the top differences between a private and public company. As mentioned several times above, a public company is able to sell their shares to the public (millions and millions of shareholders). A private company can sell their shares to only a few investors who are willing to buy. The second difference is that in a public company, the stocks are traded on stock exchanges. A private company's stocks are traded by private investors. A public company has to follow regulations issued by SEC while private companies do not. For private companies, this hold true until they have reached $10 million and more than 500 shareholders. Another difference is how the companies secure their funds. A public's company source of fund is by selling its shares and bonds. A private company receives funds from private investors.

Examples of public companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase.
Examples of private companies are Koch Industries, Bechtel Group, Mars.

I researched largest private companies in America and found Cargil ranked 1 as well as it brings a revenue of $109.7 Billion dollars. For a company so “big” I have never heard of it before until last semester in Bio
materials class I took. When doing this week’s lecture what I notice I dislike about Private companies is that a corporation does not need to submit any documentation to SEC which has been spoken on much in this thread. To take a side step we do not know where are food comes from , in general. Cargil which is in multiple industries but, particularly Food we do not know where the money goes for various processing for food. With such a large private company that doesn’t disclose anything about how are food is being made and what money actually goes into making the food I am concerned about illegal practice happening.

Private companies are not able to trade shares with the public, whereas public companies can. The benefit of staying private is that you don't have to alter you business model to fit Wall Street's expectations. You are also in control of who is investing in your business. However, the cons of staying private are that your company name is not going to be well-known. The pros of going public are that you create a lot of revenue for your company. Being public allows more people to know about your company and it is easier to do business with other people. One con about going public is that it is a very time consuming process and there is a lot of criteria that needs to be met. Koch Industries is a privately owned company with a revenue of 100 billion. I read that this company re-invests about 90 percent of its earnings, helping grow and keeping it at a high standard. JPMorgan Chase is at #3 of the top public companies according to Forbes with a market cap of $387.67 billion.

The key differences between public and private companies mainly revolve around how exclusive both are and how each succeeds with respect to their public disclosure. A public company has full access to the public market in that any entity can invest in the company's stocks, thereby enhancing the company's liquidity and making it easier to sell shares. Private companies do not have this type of access and therefore have fewer investors as a result. A private company might favor this option of being privately exclusive for a few reasons, such as not being required to submit quarterly or annual financial statements required by the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). This avoids the costs of hiring or designating an accounting department for following the SEC regulations, which can actually be counterproductive if the private company receives no public interest from investors after already going public. If a private company does decide to go public, it has to undergo an initial public offering (IPO) written up by investment bankers that allows public access to the company's financial records. The main advantage of public companies in this sense, is to provide market analysts with a proper evaluation regarding the company's condition, which is more appealing to investors since they have more financial insight of the company. Investors actually value public companies over private ones for this reason.

A quick look at the top publicly-owned medical device companies yields results such as Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, GE Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, Becton Dickinson, and Stryker, all of which are well-known in terms of their success and global distribution. Privately-owned medical device companies are not as well known, the most successful ones being limited-liability corps (LLC) such as Active Medical LLC or Dynamite Therapy LLC. The company I currently work for is a privately-owned LLC (PCT Cell Therapy) that remains private because it carries out clinical procedures involving breakthrough cell-therapy techniques that must first prove to be clinically safe and effective before the company can establish its market value. Are there any examples of companies that went from being privately-owned to public too early? Or have there been any companies that went from being publicly-owned to private? The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been perceived as motivation for a company to privatize itself to avoid the internal controls that the act imposes. These internal controls aim to improve the integrity of a company's financial info, accountability, and fraud prevention to the point that they took down ENRON in 2001 by uncovering their financial fraud. Should such an act be enforced on public companies, or does it limit the time and resources that a company can instead invest in its medical device development?

References:
"5 Key Differences between a Private and Public Company" by Ronan Steyn (June 2013) Ventureburn
"Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002" Investopedia

As mentioned by ih37, the biggest difference between a public company and private company is that you could buy shares of the public company and the company is required to file quarterly earnings reports with Securities and Exchange Commission. This gives public companies advantage to raise capital to expand the business by selling stocks and bonds. The main advantage of private companies is that management doesn't have to answer to stockholders and isn't required to file disclosure statements with the SEC. Public companies must inform shareholders about and get approval for the company’s operations, financial performance, management actions, and other decisions. Some of the top public companies are: Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, AT&T, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Verizon, Microsoft and Wal-Mart.

One major difference between publicly and privately held companies is the way they deal with public disclosure. A public company has to reveal everything quarterly and annually to the SEC who reviews this information. The company has to hire accountants who can prepare these reports to submit to the SEC, which means paying more workers. Public companies have more investors compared to private companies, which means if the company loses money, that loss will be divided among all of those people rather than only affecting the owner. However, having more people could result in delays in decision making processes. For private companies there is complete ownership. Decision making is a lot quicker with a small number of investors and board of directors. These companies don't have to report their earnings to the SEC, which means they don't need to hire accountants who prepare these documents. Investors can't find out about the fluctuations in the companies' earnings from the previous years since it is kept private. One con is that if the company loses money, the owner will lose a lot since there isn't as many partners.

There are several key differences between public and private companies. Public companies can be owned by an almost unlimited amount of shareholders and stocks are traded publicly on the stock market. Owners of this stock may receive dividends for each individual stock they own after quarterly or yearly profits are calculated. They are responsible for submitting quarterly reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission consisting of documents such as Cash Flow Statements, Income Statements, and Balance Sheets, which can be viewed by anyone who wishes to review that information. Employees are sometimes compensated through bonuses and stock options. Private companies do not have to disclose their financial documents and may only be attainable by employees in that company. They have fewer shareholders and usually reward employees through profit sharing and stock appreciation rights.

A private company does not disclose their books to the public in general. The boss alone is in charge of the business. This gives them the freedom to manage the company in their own way. Meanwhile, a public company has to respond to the shareholders by giving them updates about how the company is doing, as well as disclose the books to the general public. An example of a public company is Tesla; all the decisions in this company has to be taken into consideration of the company and the shareholder's financial benefits. An example of a private company is Schoology, a learning management system for K-12 schools. Even though the company is still fairly new, they have come across pretty far by having the freedom to manage the company the way the owners like to. However, they seek to become public in the future.

There are several differences between public companies and private ones. For one, as many mentioned, a public company is able to sell shares of the company to the public, while private companies cannot (however they can sell private shares to investors). Another one, which I found interesting, is that public companies must report their records to the SEC while private ones do not, provided that they are under 10 million dollars and under 500 shareholders. This means that the SEC does not have as much regulatory control over private companies! Yet another difference is the main source of funds for the two: for public companies, it's from selling shares and bonds and for private companies, it is from investors/venture capitalists.
Each definitely have their own pros and cons, but for public companies, their biggest pro is getting a great deal of capital to invest into the company. The biggest con might be the regulations that public companies have to abide by. For private companies, the biggest pro is the limitation of risk, since there is much more control in investors and money flow. The biggest con might be the lack of liquid funds to invest in ventures or in the company.
One example of a company that was once private but is now public is Spotify, who set their IPO back on April 3rd. By going with their IPO, they rose to 26 billion dollars, immensely growing the company, showing how successful it was.

There are a few important differences between public and private companies. The biggest would have to be that public companies open their shares to the public whereas private companies sell to certain investors and venture capitalists. This causes deviations in the standards and rules these two types of companies must abide to. A public company must abide by SEC (Securities and Exchange Committee) regulations and must answer to their shareholders. Private companies can withhold all information from the public. The pro of the public company is that they can attain funds quickly by selling stocks. However, they have to abide by stricter regulations due to their shareholders, as mentioned earlier. For private companies, it is to their benefit to withhold information about their operations and get the upper hand in the industry, but as a result face a hard time in attaining funds when needed. In addition, if a private company attains 500 shareholders and 10 million dollars, they must abide by SEC regulations. Bechtel is the eighth largest US private company. They are an international engineering construction company with billions of dollars in revenue. Google is probably one of the most familiar public companies with a long history of achievements.

Private businesses are usually owned by a family, or subgroup of a larger company. It can be either partnerships or sole proprietorships. While a public company is a firm that offers a part of itself for share to the public through Initial Public Offering (IPO) to raise investment assets, which means investors owned a part of the company's profits and interests.
The key differences between private and public companies:
1. trading of shares: a private company can trade its private shares to a few private shareowner or investors while a public company stock is traded publicly on the stock exchange. The stocks of a public company are traded on stock exchanges.
2. number of investors: for starting a public company: at least 7 members are needed. For a private company: minimum 2 members.
3. reporting requirements: Public companies have more reporting requirements (ex. file quarterly financial reports, annual reports, etc.). Private companies have no reporting requirements.
4. access to capital: Public companies have immediate access to high amounts of capital, while private does not.
5. valuation considerations: Public companies are easier for business analysts and investors to assess than private companies.
6. risks.

It is hard to tell which type would success as it depends on the company. Many privately held companies earn much more than public companies.

Example of private companies:
- Chik-fil-A
- Mars Inc.
State Farm
Dell
Example of public companies:
- Google Inc.,
- Chevron Corporation
- Procter & Gamble Co.

Refrences: quora, investopedia, corporatefinanceinstitute, allbusiness

Private companies, in my opinion, have more of a small business feel even though they can be very large in size. They have a small number of owners, they are not traded publicly, yet the shares are amongst its employees. Public companies can be traded publicly and must report their financial data quarterly, so in my opinion they will receive more publicity. Both private and public companies are motivated by their shareholders, but I believe it would be easier for public companies to obtain more investors compare to private companies, where their financial data is not reported publicly. Below is a the top 5 public and private companies from Forbes in 2017 as a reference. I personally have heard of every public company in the top 5, while I haven’t heard of one in the top 5 for private companies.

List of America’s largest private companies – Top 5 for 2017
1. Cargill – revenue of 109.7 billion – agricultural services
2. Koch Industries – natural gas, plastics
3. Albertsons – produce
4. Deloitte – accounting organization
5. PricewaterhouseCoopers – accounting organization

List of America’s largest public companies – Top 5 for 2017
1. Apple – revenue of 230 billion
2. Berkshire Hathaway
3. JP Morgan Chase
4. ExxonMobil
5. AT&T

The public company refers to a company that listed on a recognized stock exchange and traded publicly. A private  company is that company not listed on a stock exchange and is held privately by the members. A public company is owned and traded publicly, on other hand a private company is a closely held one and requires two or more persons for its formation.

A public company can invite the general public for subscribing shares of the company. A private company has no right to invite public for suscription.

To start a business, the public company needs to a certificate of commencement of business after it is incorporated. In contrast, a private company can start its business just after receiving a certificate of incorporation.

A public company is required to file quarterly and annual financial reports with the SEC. A private company has no obligation to disclose its financial results to the general public.

I would prefer to start initially as a Sole Proprietorship as this would be more flexible and would allow me to take the decisions for my business as per my vision and goals for the company, provided I have the investment needed to start a business by myself. As time would pass by I would come across people associated with similar businesses and would give me time to meet people with similar ideologies helping find partner/s that match the ideas and goals.
A difference of interests is also essential as this helps to look from a different perspective the possibilities/results of a situation which I as an individual would have missed otherwise.I would like my partner to think of the various possible problems that would arise of any situation and would discuss, understand and fix the best that would fit our business. The Partner should be able to give in the same amount of dedication, time and sincerity as much as I would to run the business successfully.