Maybe if the founder has a majority they can sell their shares to someone and the company keeps on running. If the new owners don't intend to ever do an IPO I guess the existing employees end up with options to buy stock in a company that they will never be able to sell. Only upside would be if new owners take out a dividend, since that would assumably be a fixed amount per stock regardless of who owns the stock, unless of course the new owners are able to circumvent that by doing an unequal dividend payout that only goes to certain owners.