>>BUT, if you decide to sell them, you can't just sell them to a specific person over the counter. You'd have to sell on a market so that anyone can potentially

>>BUT, if you decide to sell them, you can't just sell them to a specific person over the counter. You'd have to sell on a market so that anyone can potentially buy them and potentially outbid your intended investor. >So if I was looking for someone who would build a company with me, someone who would take on an entrepreneurial role, provide expertise, labour or personal connections, I wouldn't be allowed to do that. I wouldn't be allowed to give shares to employees in exchange for labour either. Nor would there be any family businesses. A good market is an open market. If you look for someone with "certain expertise", you can offer that for money, while at the same time putting shares of your company on the market. The person could then buy the shares for money, and you can give him that money for his "expertise". But if someone else outbids that person on the shares, he will still get the money, but someone else gets the shares. If the person ONLY wants to work for those shares, and not for money, he will have to outbid the market price. If he doesn't want to outbid the market price, and you agree with that, you actually want to give him shares for free.