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by throwaway55671 840 days ago
Perhaps the founders want to remain there and grow, perhaps they want to focus on something else or retire. Perhaps the plan always was to sell after X years - I don't see anything wrong about that, still better to innovate&sell than just buy stock&sell IMHO.

You can't attract investors if they can't sell in case the investment is successful. This is severely limiting and a terrible situation to be in - especially if you already have investors, who might demand their money back from you - way before your profits could cover it.

And the worst thing that might happen - you design a startup to be acquired by Microsoft/Apple/Google and then EU comes and says no. WTF?
1 comments
RandomLensman 840 days ago
Why would competition law and/or national security laws not apply to a start-up or its acquirers? Why would they or their acquirers get exceptions? Would those exceptions cover patents as well on the national security? What else and why?

Also, this isn't the EU saying "no" at the moment, but looking into it, as it does with many things.

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throwaway55671 840 days ago
They shouldn't get exceptions. There shouldn't be so many laws and regulations that result in EU being so behind economy-, success- and investment-wise.
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RandomLensman 840 days ago
Not sure why you think it is the number of laws and regulations that lead to that. The US has huge amounts of those, too.

Some structural differences are in part actually from the US having been less permissive than Europe in banking.

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