How Sequoia forced Tony Hsieh to sell Zappos
blogs.reuters.com
blogs.reuters.com
(also: especially if you're successful).
Except that Tony Hsieh is now on a committee with Jeff Bezos, and 4 executives from Amazon and Zappos. It will still operate as their own entity, run by Tony, and they've basically placated the VCs with Amazon stock while he gets full control over the company, culture, and with access to Amazon's resources. They went inside the deal in a couple of places, check out Inc.'s article on the subject.
For now, at least. As staunch commented on the other thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1409915), this is still really a honeymoon period.
It was the price he paid to get the company where it was that he was in that bind (a good bind to be in, if you ask me), and the best move he could have made to keep the company and the destiny of the culture in his hands.
(Edit: An argument against this case would be Tivoli. It was bought out by IBM and slowly the cultures merged.)
If you want to get the whole story, support the original publisher and read what several commenters considered the best article they'd read all day...skip this and read the original:
And it's an important point: if you accept VC money in this post-Sarbox don't expect an IPO exit environment keeping control is going to be nearly impossible. The best possible outcome is selling your company to another and most of the time that doesn't end happily for the founders.