As Robert Reffkin said during the T3 Summit, going public is just a financing event, one that gives a companies the resources to invest in growth and scale. Acquisitions such as the one Compass made in digital transaction management startup Glide Labs in April represent an example of this. Compass has long marketed itself as a tech company, and it has leveraged its financing to make that story a reality with acquisitions of promising real estate tech startups like Glide, title startup Modus and popular CRM provider Contactually.