Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomkin | Hacker News Reader

Has everyone forgotten about the "family owned business" or the business where you just keep it? I feel like I'm saying something foreign, where it shouldn't be foreign at all. Why does everything have to come down to selling the company

Here's my point: Everyone believes in growth. And everyone believes in small business, but people also believe capitalism is fine the way it is.

And we can believe all of those things at once, and wonder why we have poor people in our society, cheque cashing stores and inequality.

You can believe in those three ideas all you want, but they don't believe in each other.

View on HN

The assumption is that with a "family owned business," you're still running the business, right?

The OP is actually saying that's one of the viable options -- to keep the business and stay at the helm.

What he's arguing is that you're not likely to ever successfully be able to keep the business (not sell), hire someone else to run it for you, and never have to work again -- the obvious exception being e.g. Bill Gates (and the difference being that Microsoft was so huge and firmly rooted that he could hand it off).

It says 'run it' right there in the title. Keeping it is definitely an option but running it by remote control is something I advocate (strongly) against.

It does, but the slant always seems to be towards selling it as a better option. I agree remote-management doesn't work. But even here on HN, very rare to see a pro-"keep it" stance on anything. Silicon Valley seems obsessed with "get rich" outcomes.

It depends on the business, the persons involved and it depends on your future plans. If you see it as 'leveling up' then selling it is the best way forward, if you want a nice business where you call the shots that you grow at your own pace then keeping it would seem to be the best course. But that's a totally different discussion and a much more complex one.

I would say that, if you're looking to try and "remote-control" your business, then it's probably a far better option for you to sell it than to keep it.

Eventually the owner will retire, so a sale does happen. There's always an exit of some kind, maybe not the glitzy glamorous one written up in the papers.

I know someone who ran a small town diner for decades and eventually sold it to a niece, who had worked there for the last twenty years anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com