It's all about the exits. This post does a nice job explaining it: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-better-to-sell-a-startup-for-20-million-instead-of-20

It's all about the exits. This post does a nice job explaining it: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-better-to-sell-a-startup-for-20-million-instead-of-200-million-2013-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-better-to-sell-a-star... Compare Huffington Post and TechCrunch. Both sold to AOL at the same time. HP for $314M, TC for $30M. Michael Arrington walked away with 25% more money than Ariana Huffington despite selling for 1/10th the price. The Parsely team could probably sell their company tomorrow for $50M if they wanted to and everyone would make money. If they raised that $40M that sale would be blocked. I'm sure the team has higher expectations, but they preserved their options. Smart move.