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> why do people make businesses to sell them?

Think of it as specialization. Some people are best in the wear-many-hats start up stage where everything is scrappy and there aren't a lot of rules and structure. And if they want the business to continue to grow and prosper, eventually that environment needs to change.

And sometimes people who are good at the startup stage have trouble transitioning into a more mature phase of a business's lifetime. In which case, it's probably more responsible to sell it to someone who can properly nurture it.

> why would a business run the same without the person who did all the work doing it?

This is the part that I don't get either. I can imagine hearing "this coffee shop got better since the new owners", but I know I have heard "this place used to be good until it changed owners". And since the new owners have paid X years of profit which they arguably want to recover in less than X years, it is more than likely that they'll start cutting costs as a result.

So I wouldn't have a reason to believe that a business with new owners would run just as well as before, and in fact I would expect the opposite.

> This is the part that I don't get either. I can imagine hearing "this coffee shop got better since the new owners", but I know I have heard "this place used to be good until it changed owners". And since the new owners have paid X years of profit which they arguably want to recover in less than X years, it is more than likely that they'll start cutting costs as a result.

To be fair, I know at least one case of "this coffee shop got better since the new owners", but to be fair, it's because coffee shops are not really comparable to startups - namely because a very unsuccessful café can still hold huge real estate value.

Namely, in this case I'm talking about a café near a city center and a huge office building, but it was very dark, had old moldy sandwiches exposed and mixed low quality coffee with the brand coffee.

As you can imagine, after it was acquired by the new owners they just had to redecorate and sell normal products, and it quickly got packed every day.

Not sure if there's any possible equivalent for tech companies, though.

Sometimes it's the goal from the start, and sometimes it’s a result of time changing interests and priorities (not everyone wants the same thing 5-10 years later). Many folks also want to maximize the amount of their life spent not working. Some times it’s as simple as wanting to be wealthy (or wealthier).

> but why do people make businesses to sell them

Building something and maintaining it are two different things which require different skills, different finances and different partners. Innovation requires a curious, scientific mind. Making something profitable requires engineering and an MBA.

I couldn't care less about giving ideas away no matter how long I worked on them. Ideas exist as a tool for me to get what I really want out of the world. When they outlive that purpose I endeavor to discard them quickly and without fanfare.

Creating something and working with something established are two different things requiring different skills.

Let's say you are an inventor, you just made, say, a new type of coffee maker. You just did some prototypes, worked out the details, made it safer and more convenient, have it make better tasting coffee, considered mass production, etc... You filed the patent and now have a great product on your hands, and now what? Are you going to do value engineering, process scaling, etc... and build your career on that? These are interesting topics, but maybe that's not what you are good at, and you prefer inventing, so you will sell that patent to someone who is more into mass production and optimization and work on your next invention.

Businesses are like inventions, some people prefer and are better at creating new businesses, others are more about keeping things stable and profitable on the long term. The work the founder has done does not necessarily make him better for growing the business and making profits.

Because life is finite.

> why would a business run the same without the person who did all the work doing it?

This is 100% a concern. If a business is successful because the founder puts in insane amount of work that makes it less valuable to buy.

You ask the question: What would happen if the founders take a multi-month vacation? If the business would keep pumping money, either because it is passive, or because they trained people well and the machine is working without them, then that is a good candidate to buy. If it would fall, or cease to be a business that is a bad business to buy.

ADHD :)

But seriously I love building things but support is tiring. I don't build a business to sell them, but I sell a business once I am not passionate enough anymore.

> as a scientist, i am not terribly interested in giving away the ideas that i have worked on for, typically, years. i become quite invested in them

And, at the point that something new grabs your interest, wouldn't you rather let go of that thing you spent years on?

This is why people make businesses to sell - they are looking forward to the next new thing.

We had a small IT business. In our case, I discovered that I dislike all the sales, networking, and marketing stuff - which was dominating my time.

Our attempts to outsource that just didn't work: marketing companies are happy to take your money, right up until you require them to meet sales targets.

So we sold, for a pittance really, but I got my life back.

never get married to a position. whether I bought shares in my trading portfolio, or created shares in a new business, its all to sell them at a higher price.

your unfamiliarity with that concept is because you are segregated from the market almost completely in your scientist example, you are subsidized by programs where it’s completely mystical why the funding runs out when it does, as opposed to rapidly iterating on marketable things as a means to an end

I also have a couple of non-profit entities now, those are specially incentivized to dump otherwise sunk cost ideas into, but they are not sunk cost in a non profit. there is no reason to ever do this outside of that structure

privatize the gains, socialize the losses, thats the whole philosophy. it is predicated on actually having gains to begin with.

You can work at a business you do not own.

You do not have to sell 100% of the business.

> why do people make businesses to sell them?

Money to go do something else.

Some people enjoy building a business, not running one.