I think there’s a pretty good chance that’s not a very fair statement. OP’s friend was management, not the SPAC sponsor. He would have been subject to a lock-up on his stock following the de-SPAC transaction. There’s a very good chance that the stock price would have declined substantially during that period, so I’m not sure what cash there was for him to grab in the context of the de-SPAC transaction. To briefly be an executive of a failing public company doesn’t sound very enticing to me. At all.
It sounds to me like OP’s friend’s company was overly eager to go public but with the benefit of hindsight realized that it wasn’t the right choice for the business.
There also may be some timing bias. The SPAC craze coincided with the apex of late stage money losing “startups”. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the private markets have done a major repricing of private firms in the last 2 years.
It’s intrinsically difficult to value money losing firms. Apple was famously 90 days from bankruptcy, and Uber is now suddenly profitable. Sears is bankrupt, and GE is on the same path.
There was certainly exuberance in 2021, and that likely lead to a number of bad deals.
It sounds to me like OP’s friend’s company was overly eager to go public but with the benefit of hindsight realized that it wasn’t the right choice for the business.