This is actually a viable exit strategy for a founder, if you can believe it. The first startup I worked at blew up 3 times. The initial investors gave up and

This is actually a viable exit strategy for a founder, if you can believe it. The first startup I worked at blew up 3 times. The initial investors gave up and sold their losses. The assets were sold to a large company. The large company agreed to keep the company separate with the founders on the cap table in exchange for keeping the team together. Ran through all that money and then sold the company again, though abandoning the tech and really just selling the team. Each round everybody got non-trivial retention bonuses. The founders were careful to negotiate a non-preferential cap table (how they did that is beyond me -- amazing sales people) and made a tidy profit on each sale. It's not "unicorn money", but it's definitely "living well" money. And the funny thing is that running the same company in the ground 3 times is not a strike against you in the VC world it seems. I was young and stupid at the time. I should have stuck around and rode their coat tails for a while -- I would have made at least "house money" off it. But I was a bit too focused on doing "real work" and ended up embarking on a career that made many people very wealthy, not including myself ;-) No regrets really, but I may have some when I retire...