"Usually" is the key phrase. The first startup I worked for turned down an $50M acquisition offer when we only had 15 employees and no funding. Everyone up to e

"Usually" is the key phrase. The first startup I worked for turned down an $50M acquisition offer when we only had 15 employees and no funding. Everyone up to employee 10 would have made at least a million dollars off of the deal. 2 years, $20M of investment and 150 employees later, the company was "sold" for peanuts in a deal where the VCs folded us into another portfolio company and nobody got anything.