Available data show that from mid‑2022 through roughly mid‑2024, the IPO/SPAC/direct‑listing market for late‑stage, venture‑backed tech companies was historically weak, with only a handful of notable exits, which matches Sacks’s “frozen for two years / very few exits” characterization.

• Macro view of the window:

  • Multiple analyses describe 2022–2024 as an IPO “winter,” with the IPO window effectively closed in 2022 and the SPAC market largely collapsed, forcing private tech companies to delay liquidity and stay private longer. (sampfordadvisors.com)
  • Jay Ritter’s VC‑exit data (as summarized in a 2025 review of unicorns) report that VC‑backed IPOs averaged just 22 per year from 2022–2024, versus 156 in 2021, the lowest level since the financial crisis, indicating a dramatic drying‑up of public exits. (reddit.com)

• Evidence specific to late‑stage tech IPOs:

  • By June 29, 2023, CNBC reported there had not been a single “notable venture‑backed tech IPO” in the U.S. since December 2021, implying essentially zero high‑profile tech IPOs over ~18 months that include the second half of 2022. (cnbc.com)
  • TechCrunch’s 2023 look at the drought counted only one meaningful U.S. tech IPO from private‑capital‑backed companies between the start of 2022 and late August 2023, underscoring how closed the window was for the kind of late‑stage startups Sacks was talking about. (techcrunch.com)
  • A 2025 overview of venture exits notes that 2022 IPO exit value collapsed by ~90% vs. 2021; the IPO window “slammed shut” in 2022 and 2023 remained very slow, with Arm, Instacart, and Klaviyo in late 2023 described as the first significant IPOs after a long drought—just a few flagship deals, not a broadly open window. (afurrier.com)

• Activity in late 2023–mid‑2024:

  • The late‑2023 IPOs of Arm, Instacart, and Klaviyo and early‑2024 IPOs such as Reddit, Astera Labs, and Rubrik are widely described as ending or thawing a two‑year tech IPO drought, not as part of a normal pipeline. (cnbc.com)
  • Even counting those, the volumes stayed very low: Renaissance Capital reported that as of October 31, 2024, only five VC‑backed tech IPOs had occurred in all of 2024, versus a 10‑year historical average of 23 per year, and that private VC‑backed tech companies had largely stayed on the sidelines for the prior three years. (renaissancecapital.com)
  • Across all sectors, the Wall Street Journal noted only 15 U.S. venture‑backed IPOs in the first half of 2024, far below the historical average of ~82 per year, confirming that the first half of 2024 was still extremely muted. Digital‑health data from Rock Health show a 21‑month stretch with no IPO/SPAC exits until Q2 2024, another sign that public exits in tech‑adjacent verticals were essentially frozen until mid‑2024. (wsj.com)

• SPACs/direct listings:

  • SPACs, which had been an alternative exit path, also collapsed: SPAC IPOs fell from 613 in 2021 to 86 in 2022 and just 31 in 2023, and hundreds of SPACs were liquidated without completing mergers, meaning this route was largely shut off for late‑stage tech as well. (en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, the record shows that from mid‑2022 through about mid‑2024, late‑stage private tech companies faced an exceptionally sparse set of IPO/SPAC/direct‑listing opportunities—only a few high‑profile exceptions against a backdrop of a shut or nearly shut window. That reality fits Sacks’s prediction (“exit ideas frozen for two years… very few exits”) materially well, so the prediction is best judged as right.