[bartwr]

I'm always for people over financial entities and capital holders, however in this case it's pretty simple - you sell control to someone for a ton of money, so why on Earth would you expect to retain it forever? You literally got millions in exchange for having less shares and it not being "your" company.

Maby startups don't even need to take on seed investor money (could be self funded, smaller team, longer time before funding etc) - but founders obviously prefer to have a nice salary and soft landing. Or sometimes literally just as a marketing strategy "we are backed by x/y/z, this proves our value". This is the price to pay. What am I missing?