I think it’s fair to assume both exist. The (small) company I work for sold to PE in 2019. They basically dumped a bunch of money in to help us scale up quickly

I think it’s fair to assume both exist. The (small) company I work for sold to PE in 2019. They basically dumped a bunch of money in to help us scale up quickly. It hasn’t all been great, but revenue continues to grow and we have (many) more employees than before from top to bottom. I expect they’ll probably try and move on soon to realize their gains, but the next buyer definitely won’t be receiving a “dead shell” unless they somehow fail to retain the employees during the transition.