The End Goals of Startups

Investors typically want to see a privately held company become a publicly traded one through an IPO or initial public offering. The other, of course, being when a bigger fish comes along and buys up a private company. Those are the two goals for the investors. And that's kind of why I get real cynical about the startup and investment communities because I've seen a lot of startups that appear only for the purpose of getting snapped up by another company.