[zszabo]

i sure hope no investor is ever so foolishly naive as to accept claims like "50:50 chance to grow the business by an order of magnitude...in the next 2 years" without the heaviest grain of salt.

More realistically, chances are that any contract between them and the founder(s) states clearly that a sale within the first n# of years can only occur if the offered on the table is m%, m being >= 100 (more likely, m >= 120, 150 or more).

If OTOH only a fraction of the offer has been invested, then it is nearly guaranteed that they will be highly motivated to sell.

If the company is growing fast, it is not in the founders' interest to sell themselves so short. In fact, i doubt there exists empirical evidence that would support the likelihood of such a situation. VCs are logically only far less motivated to keep a business operating (after all, likely their only tie to it is financial) than the owners themselves -- whose baby, after all, it is. So when the founders are ready to bail, a sane investor would immediately pick up on the ominous implications regarding the future viability of the business and try to moderate their personal exposure as much as possible.