What It Really Takes to Take a Company Public: Lessons From the NYSE to a Modern AI-Driven IPO

Very few people understand what it truly takes to turn a private company into a public one. Many imagine a simple process where you hire bankers, file an S1, go on a road show, and ring the bell. In real life, an IPO is closer to rebuilding an aircraft while it is mid air and everyone is watching you.

In a long conversation, Amy, a finance leader who has taken multiple companies public, including the New York Stock Exchange, walked through what the journey actually feels like. Her experiences stretch from one of the oldest financial institutions to a new AI driven travel platform, Navan.

Becoming CFO of the New York Stock Exchange

In early 2004 Amy was offered the CFO role at the NYSE. She had never been the CFO of an entire company, only a division, but she had deep experience across Wall Street and trading.

What she did not expect was just how outdated and messy the NYSE was behind the curtain.

The exchange was a not for profit membership organization sitting on a billion dollars in cash but unable to compete with international exchanges that had already gone public and had access to huge pools of capital.

The NYSE suffered from:

• A private, non commercial mindset

• No acquisition currency

• Slow, outdated systems

• A culture similar to a government office

• A budget process that literally depended on a “plug” to fake profitability

Her first mission was to turn a century old institution into a real business.

Rebuilding the NYSE From the Inside

Before the NYSE could even consider becoming public, it needed to operate like a company that deserved to be public.

This meant:

• Reviewing every revenue stream

• Reworking every expense line

• Replacing paper based processes

• Building proper financial controls

• Fixing the entire budgeting system

• Introducing discipline, accountability and modern systems

One of the most revealing moments came when she asked for the budget in Excel and discovered the FP&A head had inserted a plug so the board would see fictional profits. That discovery triggered a complete overhaul of the budgeting process, referred to internally as Project Mulligan.

The Reverse Merger That Became the NYSE IPO

Leadership originally said they had five years to go public. The competitive landscape reduced that to a little over two years.

The NYSE solved this by merging with Archipelago, an electronic trading platform that was already public. This gave them public status and a modern tech foundation.

The merger created tens of billions of dollars in value for members. Leadership, including Amy, earned almost nothing because of a compensation cap placed to secure member approval. For the executives, the years of transformation were more like community service than a personal financial windfall.

But the move was essential and it worked.

Fast Forward: Preparing Navan for Its IPO in 2025

Today Amy is CFO of Navan, a global travel and expense platform powered heavily by AI. She joined the board in March 2024 and became CFO in June 2024. The company went public a little over a year later.

Her task was to identify what would block the company from going public and fix it quickly.

The main focus areas were:

1. Taxes
A mistake is survivable in a private company but causes chaos in a public one.

2. Financial accuracy
She needed to teach the team what a material weakness or restatement meant. Her translation made it clear:

• a significant deficiency is “oh no,”

• a material weakness is “oh no again,”

• a restatement is “what just happened.”

3. KPIs
Public companies cannot change definitions whenever they like. Metrics need to be consistent, repeatable and aligned with the company story.

4. People and systems
Nine direct reports. Almost all were new hires. The quality of the team determines the success of an IPO.

What Worries Them

The concerns were clear.

• Advances may shrink.

• Publishers may narrow the range of what they acquire.

• Content is exploding and attention is shrinking.

• Podcasts, video, short form content, everything is competing with reading time.

• The old global publishing model may fracture.

And yet every one of them also believes the industry will survive. Books have survived television, radio, movies, and the internet. Gen Z is even swinging back toward physical books, almost as a rebellion against screens.

The AI Engine Behind Navan

Navan is modernizing business travel by moving people away from phone calls and paper receipts into a fast, AI backed booking and expense experience.

Key highlights:

• Full trip booking in around seven minutes

• Around fifteen percent cost savings for companies

• Half of all support interactions powered by Navan’s AI system, AVA

• AI work is supervised by additional LLM layers to avoid critical mistakes

Without AI, Navan would need many times more support staff. Legacy competitors often have ten to twenty times more agents.

This is the core of Navan’s value proposition.

The Reality of the IPO Road Show

A road show is when leadership meets institutional investors to tell their story and justify the valuation. Amy’s belief is that it should never feel like a blind date. Investors should already know the company before the real pitch begins.

The team held thirty six meetings across cities in one week. Investors wanted clarity on the business model, differences from competitors, growth potential, risks and valuation.

They priced the IPO at twenty five. The stock traded down. Amy views this as a moment in time. Execution is what matters.

Advice for Young Professionals Today

Amy has a unique view into how AI is changing work and what roles remain strong.

Her advice:

1. Pick a culture that matches your nature
Do you like speed or structure? Certainty or chaos? Meritocracy or seniority? Most people skip this question and suffer later.

2. Consider two often overlooked career paths
Audit and accounting are in high demand.
Wealth management is about to transform as generational wealth transfers occur.

3. You do not need to be a coder
Navan hires bright thinkers who can use AI frameworks rather than ground level programmers. Modern tech work favors problem solvers, not just engineers.

Closing Thoughts

From the NYSE to Navan, the same lesson repeats: going public is not about standing on a balcony with confetti. It is about transforming how a company thinks, behaves, reports and operates.

It is about systems that work, people who can execute and a story that investors believe in.

Most will never witness the exhausting, technical and emotional journey behind a successful IPO. The ones who have lived it know that ringing the bell is the final ten seconds of a very long climb.

Until next time, this is Steve Eisman, and this has been The Real Eyesman Playbook. .
If you’d like to catch my interviews and market breakdowns, visit The Real Eisman Playbook or subscribe to the Weekly Wrap channel on YouTube.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Please consult a licensed financial adviser before making investment decisions.