> I'm glad the founders got their exit

I'm not.

I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits).

Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again).

I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich?

Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...

I know that I'm basically being trollbait (around here), by saying this, but I personally believe that the very existence of an "exit plan" is a problem.

A business is supposed to be an ongoing, perpetual enterprise. Maybe it grows, maybe it stays the same, but it isn't something that should (in my opinion) be designed as a product, in itself, with a "sell by" date. If it gets brought up, then that's [maybe] good, but it shouldn't actually be in the business plan. It's just a random lifecycle event. We can plan to be ready for it, but it shouldn't be a corporate goal.

It's quite possible to do that. I worked for nearly 27 years, for a company that is over 100 years old. I think the world's oldest company is over 1,400 years old, and just got brought out, for the first time, about 10 years ago.

Agreed. Promising stuff like "Hey we built this because everything else is bad" and then years later selling it to a company that turns it bad is somehow even worse than classic bait and switch.

Sell it to the employees? It won't be lucrative to selling it to someone with more cash than sense, but it may be more likely to preserve the value. There's no guarantee of course, and there's so little experience societal wide in running an employee co-op.

There are a few employee co-ops, but I don't know how good they are. Over here in the UK we have the Co-op[0], which is a national chain of small local shops. It's a consumer co-operative rather than a workers' cooperative, though. I don't know how well it works, or what its challenges are, but it definitely exists.

[0] https://www.co-operative.coop

The Co-op (referred to in [0]) is also a bank, funeral directors, insurer, and solicitor! They're really quite successful to be honest.

Nationwide is another example of a successful cooperative as well (large UK bank, particularly in the mortgage space). They're customer and employee owned I believe, my wife and I got £200 last year as a profit share for being customers.

I'm a huge fan of the model, but it's difficult to get going. I think they're also more expensive to run as their operations tend to be a little more complex.

Don’t forget John Lewis/Waitrose and the excellent Richer Sounds:

Richer Sounds boss in £3.5m staff giveaway https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48269171

Every time that happens it just makes an opportunity for someone else to start a new competitor

It's absolutely tiresome having to keep up with that rat race for everything. And if that principle actually worked then enshittification wouldn't be profitable to engage in to begin with.

You can be responsible with an exit and sell to someone you’d believe will keep the company’s mission.

> And what if I can't find anyone?

I would honestly be surprised if that was the case, but if you really tried, then you tried.

You pick who you’d hope would continue the mission OR you try to sell to employees.

> And what if they do 180 a week later?

Then you picked wrong, but the risk of picking wrong is not a good reason to not try to pick correctly.

You can retire or quit, like a normal person. I'm sure you can find a new CEO.

The Alands Island .AX TLD allows anyone to be their own registrar for free. Only 20euro/year for domains.

> I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole

Oh yeah, I fully agree with the enshittification sentiment.

Admittedly, a DNS registrar for me personally is something I'd just swap without much thought but I can think of a few services I use where I wouldn't be so loosely coupled from the product if those founders were to exit.

It's a bit paradoxical on my part I think and I do wish we had more lifestyle businesses that don't have to become massive.

Mind you, I would have put iwantmyname in that basket now that I think about it.

Bonus points for using “enshittified”.

Yeah I was a fan, had every domain with them that I could! But once they were acquired their .org renewal prices just did not make sense any more, and they were missing some functionality that I thought was crucial and didn't seem inclined to add it (can't remember what it was now, maybe MFA).

Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.