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Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

It means the business can't practically be sold - if you buy it and have to spend all the profits on someone to manage it, you make nothing for what you've spent. You could buy it and manage it yourself, but then you're effectively paying a significant amount of money for a very difficult job - might as well just go get a job for someone else.

That ultimately means that the business itself isn't worth anything, so when the owners decide they don't want to manage it anymore, it'll likely just have to fold.

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Why is that unfortunate?

Genuinely.

It seems like the people doing the labor keeping the profits is a good outcome?

What OP probably means that business was able to pay a living wage for owners and nothing more. So there was no additional cash for hiring manager, not even thinking about something for "new owner".

I feel like that's simple reading comprehension. The "unfortunately" isn't like in the context of whether that fact is good or bad in general, but specifically in the context of whether or not it was a good business to buy.

If the business can't be sold, all of those people lose their jobs.

Also, the owners presumably took a significant financial risk in starting the business, which hasn't paid off. It really baffles me when people think that employees, who aren't taking out personally-guaranteed SBA loans and risking losing it all in order to start a business, deserve all of the profit from the business. They deserve to be paid a fair wage, but people who actually take the risk to create something deserve to capture the upside.

It's unfortunate for the potential purchaser of the business.

"Unfortunately, my friend ate his entire birthday cake." It's not unfortunate that my friend ate the cake (though it probably actually is, that's not why it's used there). It's unfortunate that I don't get to have any of his cake.

If mom & pop doing the labor wanted to retire by selling the business, they can't. What might have been an asset isn't. So they either keep working even though they are of retirement age, or they close up shop with a smaller nest-egg.

The fundamental problem is they haven't built an asset, and now they're trying to sell a job and likely deluded about the value.

If all you have is a business that supports a good wage for 1-2 overworked owners, that's worth something not materially different from $0.

They don't own a business...they own a job.

No, they own a business they work at. Just like workers co-ops. In many ways that's the ideal.

Until they ant to retire. Then what do you do?

If you are happy to walk away and hand the "business they work at" for free to someone, flame on. Thing is, unless that is family, who would you give it to and why?

For some people, building up the business is both a job and an investment. When they get old, they want the business to have enough value that they can sell it and pay for their living expenses during retirement. Or they want to be able to pass the business on to their kids so their kids are set up to make a good living.

If the business's only value is that it can provide full-time employment to someone, then it has worked out as a job but not as an investment.

There's no one right way to do it. You could instead pay yourself a salary, invest the money in other stuff (maybe through IRAs or individual 401k), and just shut down the business when you retire. And for your kids, send them to college and let them find their own careers.

It really depends on why you got into business in the first place. Maybe you just like working that way better. Or maybe you're good enough at it that you think you can get better returns by investing in your own business than you can by buying a stock market index fund.

> It means the business can't practically be sold

What? Of course it can be sold. To someone else who wants to run a mom-and-pop operation.

> might as well just go get a job for someone else.

Or be your own boss?

> That ultimately means that the business itself isn't worth anything

Are you serious?

> so when the owners decide they don't want to manage it anymore, it'll likely just have to fold.

Or they sell it to another person who wants to run the business?

You act like the only option is as passive investment.

>Of course it can be sold. To someone else who wants to run a mom-and-pop operation.

It's a small market of people who are just rich enough to buy that business, don't have another job already and don't mind working that business. And that market is already filled pretty well by franchises. It's not impossible to sell the business obviously but if they were only making eg. 100k a year there is really no market for buyers for that because if you need to take out a big loan to buy it you might make nothing and if you can afford it you have better options. It's more common in these cases from my anecdotal experience, especially for something like a restaurant, that whoever buys it will restart the business completely with a new sign, menu, ect. after the last one shuts down. This is especially true in big cities where the owners usually lease the shop. What do they really have? Why would I buy a sign and menu from them for x hundred thousand dollars if I have another option?

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