Startup founders and employees are making "retirement money" ($10M+) from secondary sales in loss-making companies at speculative valuations. This is dangerous for innovation. A few weeks ago, OpenAI did a $6.6B tender offer where employees raked in $5-10M+ a piece. The entire company is loss-making and made $4.3B in H1 2025. This is not a one-off phenomenon. If you go to secondary share platforms like Hiive and Forge, many private companies that have never made profit and are valued at 100x their ARR have liquidity demand. In other words, startup founders and employees are making retirement money when no real "business" has been created. Secondary sales, when done correctly, are fantastic for innovation. You want people taking long term risky bets to be able to live well as proof of the value they've created starts to show. Newlyweds can go buy a house, afford a car - it was meant for basic life necessities to keep people from leaving to a bigco while ensuring the had skin in the game for the future of the company. Typically, the company goes public in an IPO or gets bought, which is usually "proof" that you made something of value. Today, employees and founders make so much money from secondaries that you see: — Founders have cashed out and use their entire company as their personal "AI R&D unit" to build their whims and fancies, leaving employees who haven't holding the bag. — Early employees who have cashed out just leave and retire while most of the business is lagging its valuation. — Startups are more incentivized to grow unsustainably for 1-2yrs and secure the "insane" valuation where they can cash out instead of be invested in the business long-term. — We see liquidity being dangled as a carrot for term sheets at the Seed and A, well before the company has even reached product-market fit! Many founders have taken out more in secondary than the entire revenue of the company. This is terrible for innovation, promoting short-term get-rich-quick schemes over building businesses of durable value.