It's both a failure mode and a safety switch. The safety switch is like the old game of "Would you rather have $100 now or a 5% chance of $1000 in four years?"

It's both a failure mode and a safety switch. The safety switch is like the old game of "Would you rather have $100 now or a 5% chance of $1000 in four years?" The failure mode is the truth of public markets are absolutely closed to new entrants unless you are selling a mass market physical product or if you have over 500 million monthly users on some web service. Given the diminishing marginal utility of cash, a few million dollars RFN is tastier than a few billion dollars when you are $age+7 years old. We can always try again later, right? I'm pouring a few years of my life into creating a product That's a great point too. A lot of people get very endeared to their products and companies. Their companies are them. Other people make companies only as vehicles to flip and cash out. It's up to you. They aren't compatible viewpoints though. The company-is-part-of-me people see the make-it-then-flip-it contingency equivalent to people who only have babies to extract government benefit checks.