how do companies decide the number of shares they want to sell when they do an IPO

Question

Like why does apple have 15,5b ish shares and Microsoft have 7,4b shares outstanding

In: Economics

Answer 1

If you have a bucket of skittles to sell, you wouldn’t sell the entire bucket at once – there’d be no one willing to buy it.
Similarly, you wouldn’t sell them 1 at a time – buyers would get too impatient, etc.
There exists a sweet spot that is a good serving size for you to bundle them. Might be 10 skittles, might be 50, might be 100. It’s your choice for how many you think would result in the most buyers for your particular skittles.