Thats silly. You never start out trying to get acquihired unless you know exactly what the company you want to get acquihired by, wants. You aim super high for an ipo but if stuff goes south, you can always get acquihired.

I don't think you can 'always' get acquihired. You've got to play your cards right, get just the right team, and have people that the acquihiring company wants. I'm wondering if the acquihire is as easy as most believe it is.

Nope. As long as your idea is reasonable(which is a high chance assuming you have your head on straight which is clearly not the case if you're doing stuff like developing an 'elixir for immortality' or building a 'google killer'), you have some semblance of a product and at-least a seed round in funding, getting acquihired is not at all a problem. Trust me, I've already gotten offers for acquisitions and I've barely begun fundraising.

May I ask where (country/city) you and the team are based?

We're in the bay area.

My goal priority:

2) Start profiting enough to quit my job

3) Hire people + have office

4) Either get bought out or acquihired

5) Retire

If #2 at least doesn't take off by the time I'm 35 at the latest I'm killing myself.

At the risk of being the guy who doesn't get the joke, I suggest a better failure mode for your life. Unless you're 34 at the moment, you probably have enough time to reconsider so I hope you do.

I believe it's an inferior mode of operation, besides. Having the "at least I can do X if this fails" option lowers cognitive load caused by worrying about the consequences of failure. I don't remember where I saw this, but I believe you are actually harming your chances by setting too harsh an alternative. Then again, you may be different.

The wager is the lasting long term motivator.

I can only hope your posts are a joke but if not, why would someone acquihire you if you were only going to retire? An acquihire is about grabbing a ready-made team in a particular field.

Ideally I'd work on the product to it's end.