When it comes to an exit, there are differences between getting acquired and going public. While an attractive acquisition means payouts for the founders and employees, it can often be an endgame. Going public is more like restarting, just on an open stage. Being a public company means you’re in the public eye, you lose some of the freedoms a private company has. You’re expected to hit quarterly and annual targets, please the shareholders, and continue doing everything you did as a private company, just with less flexibility.

Going public is a huge deal. An IPO allows for a huge round of financing that will hopefully allow a company to continue to invest in growth and become profitable or even more profitable than it already is. But what should CEOs of startups and other private companies consider when thinking about eventually going public? Last week I sat down with Scott Dussault, CFO/COO at Nasuni who’s seen multiple IPOs firsthand, and I picked his brain on what it takes to go public. Here’s what I learned.

Is an IPO feasible?