I joined a biotech as employee ~70, and after 5 years of growth (up to ~800 people) we went public. Nothing really changed. It's interesting how the large amount of private capital has removed the need to go public very early on in the life-cycle of a biotech. The biggest difference is that people spend more time worrying about the stock price, but there are a number of catalytic events in our future that everyone is kind of holding their breath for so it's still kind of funny money. Compared to a tech start-up, where growth is smoother (i.e., number of active users going up), biotech lurches/jerks forward after key clinical events. Be it actual data or governmental decisions on the data. The other thing that changed was the incorporate of more rigid corporate practices like HR stuff. Everything got more serious.