> Are there really people who would turn down a hundred million dollars for a chance at a larger potential payout in 5-10 years?
Sure, and the numbers get far larger than $100 million.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin for example, turned down very large acquisition offers, including for at least a billion dollars from Yahoo, at a time when they didn't even have a serious business model.
Mark Zuckerberg turned down several large offers for Facebook when it didn't have a serious functional business. He could have walked away nearly a billionaire before Facebook had even printed a dollar of profit.
Bill Gates turned away numerous, large acquisition offers in the first ~10 years of Microsoft's existence. IBM was interested in buying them for years.
The Snapchat owners turned down ~$3 billion from Google to go public instead as an exit. Even after the beating their stock has taken in the last few months, the market cap of Snap is $15 billion today.
Sure, and the numbers get far larger than $100 million.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin for example, turned down very large acquisition offers, including for at least a billion dollars from Yahoo, at a time when they didn't even have a serious business model.
Mark Zuckerberg turned down several large offers for Facebook when it didn't have a serious functional business. He could have walked away nearly a billionaire before Facebook had even printed a dollar of profit.
Bill Gates turned away numerous, large acquisition offers in the first ~10 years of Microsoft's existence. IBM was interested in buying them for years.
The Snapchat owners turned down ~$3 billion from Google to go public instead as an exit. Even after the beating their stock has taken in the last few months, the market cap of Snap is $15 billion today.