system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does a private company go public? What is the process and requirements? Is there a set amount of profit that a company has to make before going public?
gpt
You file a certain report with the SEC and then you’re allowed to sell stock to the general public.  The report is very extensive, and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer and accountant fees and takes months to complete.

Then once you are public, public companies are required to make public quarterly and annual reports including audited financial statements along with reporting any significant corporate events, and it can be a crime or result in lawsuits if you don’t properly report them.  Private companies don’t have to disclose nearly as much; they just can’t outright lie.

There’s no set amount of profit you need to go public.  But if you have a startup company and your business model isn’t working, you might want to stay private as long as possible, because going public forces you to show all of your information and you can’t BS anymore.  That’s what happened with WeWork - they couldn’t go public in the end because it would have become obvious that the company’s business model and valuation made no sense.