Not always, but it is when you go public. I work a lot at small businesses, lots of them have shareholders who are mostly hands-off, or would prefer a more conservative approach to protect their investment.

People who invest in non-public businesses are usually in for the long haul, and come with much greater risk.

But when you go public, your business just comes a commodity, nothing but a vehicle for a fund manager to use to try and get a higher return for their clients so they get more business and commission.

In theory, it's a really democratic system, but the reality is that we've lost track of what an investment is meant to be, and the number of private individuals actually holding shares in a company directly is very low, it's mostly fund managers who literally just want to pump their numbers for a few years, because long term, they never really beat the market.