Move on as nicely as possible to everyone, including yourself, but move on. If you don't have ideas and plans on what will make the sale happen, don't sit arou

Move on as nicely as possible to everyone, including yourself, but move on. If you don't have ideas and plans on what will make the sale happen, don't sit around waiting for lighting to strike. Tell the founders your thoughts. Tell them that you will stick around for 2 months to interview and train your successor, or that you can just walk away if they want to go "clean" for a replacement, and indicate that if you are presented with the replacement to train you'll leave early. Spin it along the lines of "This situation is not one that I am improving, so I need to find a different position somewhere, where I bring a lot more value; this is in your interest and mine. We both need to be doing something different, because the current track isn't giving us our sale, so if isn't going to happen with me hopefully it will happen with a new person." It's possible you might regret it later, but that's true of all big decisions. If they are sold soon after you leave, it's not necessarily that you missed something, it may be that your leaving catalyzed things and lit a fire under the appropriate asses, either buyers or sellers, and that it wasn't something that would have happened if you had stayed. It's impossible to say what will happen to your reputation or etc; but after all, just coasting for a couple of years doesn't necessarily look good either. I say all this mainly because it sounds like you want to leave anyway. Many people would regard 15% of 1.5 million in a stable company a very good position, and would stay and accumulate savings. You don't mention what opportunities you have elsewhere.