none of the peope who had to wait for the IPO are going to make some unless they managed to sell off in the 4 days after IPO.

Fully unironically know a few folks who did exactly that. Got in at $135 and sold on the way up to $200, because it’s insane to hold a company with a P/E of… 1000x? Something stupid like that.

we don’t know that much about the pre-IPO costs

We know what firms like Thiel’s Founder’s Fund and Andressen Horowitz paid for minority positions during the earlier funding rounds (Series A -J and assorted debt swaps). And we also know what a few of the outsider funds - EchoStar, for instance - paid for advanced shares shortly before the public offering. There were definitely some deals that were worse than others (the July 2025 Tender at $212/share was EchoStar, the December 2025 Tender at $421/share was to the company’s own employees as well as some other earlier investors).

Even then, the volume of shares sold was miniscule compared to shares outstanding.