Ask HN: Do minority shareholders scare away new investors?

Re:Ask HN: Do minority shareholders scare away new investors? by blacksqr on Monday February 19, 2018 @09:27PM (#16417394)

There's only one reason they want to buy your shares, and that's because they're valuable.

If you think the company has good prospects, keep the shares. If you're right, outsiders will eventually agree with you and invest.

If you think the company is not a good investment, ask the co-founders how they're valuing the company for potential investors and ask for the full share value plus a premium.

If they won't pay a premium, you know they're BSing you and they're just hoping you'll be dumb enough to give them your shares cheap in advance of a deal.

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Re:Ask HN: Do minority shareholders scare away new investors? by montrose on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @06:22AM (#16419499)

This argument is false in the general case. It can weaken a company to have given away too much stock early on, because then there's not enough left to raise money and hire people with. If horsecaptin owned 80% of the company rather than 8%, for example, the company would be damaged goods, and investors would avoid it unless it had truly stupendous growth.

This is one reason spinoffs rarely work.

The argument for horsecaptin keeping the stock is that while 80% makes the company damaged goods, 8% may not.

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Re:Ask HN: Do minority shareholders scare away new investors? by blacksqr on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @11:03AM (#16421298)

If OP owned 80% of the shares, there would be no discussion, because OP would control the company.

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