Every entrepreneur dreams about reaching the promised land, as they say, making it big by being acquired or successfully executing an IPO. But, not so fast--I can list on more than two hands the number of entrepreneurs who were dissatisfied with the result. If they weren’t singing “ Is That All There Is,” (an old Peggy Lee song from 1969, recently revived by Christina Aguilera) they were wondering when the precise moment was that they realized, “Hey, I don’t own this company anymore.”

 

Prior to the acquisition of MySpace, News Corp Chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch had assured Chris DeWolfe and the rest of the founding team that he would not interfere with the running of MySpace; however, shortly after the acquisition in July 2005, News Corp decided to move MySpace from its laid-back office a block from the beach in Santa Monica to Beverly Hills, where all of News Corp’s Internet companies were housed. It was at that point that DeWolfe first realized that the team really didn’t own MySpace. They soon found that other things had changed as well. Decisions took a lot longer now with all the big corporate processes and the culture was not as casual. The upside, though, was that MySpace had significantly more resources at its disposal to launch multiple projects and products simultaneously. But all the resources of News Corp hasn’t stopped the hemorrhaging of MySpace’s user base to Facebook. Research firm eMarketer estimated in 2008 that ad spending on MySpace would decline from $470 million in 2009 to about $297 million in 2011 while Facebook’s revenue was expected to reach $1.7 billion in the same period. Sometimes it’s hard to maintain that entrepreneurial spirit inside a mega-corporation.

 

Garrett Camp solved that problem by buying his business back from his acquirer, eBay. Back when Camp was a Masters candidate at the University of Calgary, he and three friends launched a website-recommendation service called StumbleUpon. Three years ago, they were acquired for $75 million by eBay. Similar to most acquisitions, the founders were expected to stay on board for a contracted period of time to make sure things ran smoothly. After the honeymoon period ended, however, Camp quickly realized that making decisions inside a big company is nothing like making decisions in a small entrepreneurial company. “I was used to being able to make a quick decision, and not really checking with too many people,” Camp told WSJ reporter Jeanette Borzo recently. Little things like having to send out letters on eBay letterhead bothered him enough that within two years, Camp, with the help of investors, was able to buy his company back.

 

Giving up control or ownership of your company, even if you planned for it,  is not always a happy experience. When you see the acquirer taking your business in a different direction or, worse, running it into the ground, it gets very personal. It’s a bit like “the long goodbye.” Eventually, you either buy the business back to stop the pain or you realize it’s not the same business anymore and move on.

 

Lesson: Be sure you understand why you’re selling your business and have a backup plan for what you’ll do next. As entrepreneurs, we never really retire. Oh, and be careful what you wish for.