[mbesto]

I'm being slightly facetious.

I don't know why Mullvad issued a notice to talk about ownership, but I presume it was because they've gotten alot of M&A interest or it's a marketing move to garner trust from their client-base (i.e. others are getting distrust for selling).

I know more examples of companies who publicly say they're not interested in selling that do than those that don't. In other words, why be public about it?[0] Clearly there is M&A interest for a company like this.

Do you know any for-profit orgs that say publicly they aren't selling and actually don't? Most I know simply aren't public about it.

[0] - Btw - one M&A trick to drive up a valuation is to say you're not for sale. So yes this heuristic is absolutely valid in that sense.

[ghoward]

Upvoted because you have good points, but I thought I'd address one thing.

> I don't know why Mullvad issued a notice to talk about ownership

The reason is probably because ExpressVPN was just bought by Kape. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28552731

[mbesto]

Got it. Makes sense.

> Upvoted because you have good points

I have a feeling people are downvoting me because they think people are bad/evil for wanting money. Weird.

[Krasnol]

I didn't up nor downvote you because even though I think it's sad, I still see the interesting part in your comment:

You represent a branch of people this system grew which would rather make up some story than to believe that people actually won't sell something because it's important to them.

[mbesto]

That's fair. To expand further, businesses are run people who have families, ambitions, etc. Starting and running companies puts a lot of stress on those factors. When someone offers you life changing to sell, your ideals around "protecting the greater good of the people" can quickly dilute.

[Krasnol]

Can you imagine that this greed-talk looks alien to some people out there? Look, their numbers look quite good already. I'm sure you can have a decent life in Sweden with all that money. So why should they feel the urge to sell? Where do you see this invisible magic force which has to turn everybody into greedy zombies without principles?

And yes, think about their families. My SO would throw me out if I's sell what I believe in and I'd deserve it. What an example to the kids would that make? I'd be despicable to them.

[ghoward]

> I have a feeling people are downvoting me because they think people are bad/evil for wanting money. Weird.

Yeah, I agree it's weird.

Personally, I'd love to have enough money to not have to work the rest of my life, or worry about anything. Nothing evil with that.

[brendoelfrendo]

Probably because ExpressVPN announced their sale to Make the other day. They took advantage of the situation to day "hi, you can trust us because we're more principled than that," to both their existing customers and ExpressVPN users who want to jump ship.