slowing13

"The organic route lowers risk and reward."

Yes on the risk, fully disagree on the reward part. And i am not talking about the reward of being able to focus on the business rather than raising money.

I am talking about cold hard cash. In a successful small business, many owners will make mid 6 figures, year in, year out, and still many will make 7 figures. After a few year, it beats a lot of exits. And there are many many more of those than the few IPO / big acquisition we can read about. Even with IPOs, the remaining share of the founder sometimes makes me sorry for them.

VCs don't publicize that though, understandably.

I have a hard time understanding how TJ or lawyers can pretend there is a case here. Companies cannnot dictate what is legal or not. If you cannot resell a good that you legally buy, then you kill commerce. And Craigslist can shut down. Do i need an authorization from manufacturers for my yard sale? Wondering why it even went to the Supreme Court...

One of the problems is that he has no valid passport. The US has cancelled his. So he cannot take a regular flight. Also, any country would need to proactively make an exception to their rules to have him enter their territory, welcoming the wrath of the US administration.

I believe Mark Shuttleworth owned 100% of his company Thawte when he sold it for $575M to Verisign in 2000. In today's dollars it would be near 1B.