x.com/adamascholl/status/2018833783349547122

What the post claims

It states that “every private company that chooses to go public” is charged “7% of gross proceeds” by investment bankers.

Hard counterexample (SEC filing): Facebook’s 2012 IPO was ~1.1%, not 7%

Facebook’s final IPO prospectus filed with the U.S. SEC (Form 424B4, dated May 17, 2012) includes an explicit table of IPO economics:

• Price to public: $38.00 per share
• Underwriting discounts and commissions: $0.418 per share

That implies an underwriting discount rate of:

• $0.418 / $38.00 ≈ 1.1%

The same table also shows totals:

• Total price to public: $16,006,877,370
• Total underwriting discounts and commissions: $176,075,651

Which again implies:

• $176,075,651 / $16,006,877,370 ≈ 1.1%

Since Facebook is a clear example of a private company that went public without paying 7% of gross proceeds in underwriting discounts/commissions, the universal statement “every private company … 7%” is factually incorrect.

Additional note on “gatekeep access to the exchanges”

Even aside from fee levels, U.S. exchanges offer a direct listing path in which the exchange describes that there are “no underwriters” (i.e., an IPO is not the only route). This undermines the absolute framing that investment bankers necessarily “gatekeep access” in all cases.

Conclusion: The post’s claim is contradicted by SEC-disclosed IPO pricing terms for Facebook (a prominent counterexample), so it cannot be true that every company pays 7% of gross proceeds.