When selling up becomes selling out

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　　When selling up becomes selling out
        　　    What's the difference between selling up and selling out? In theory, the difference between the two is simple.
        　　    Imagine a graph that pits the amount of money you get against the fulfilled potential of your idea: selling up is
        　　    when you make a deal at the top of the curve, selling out is leaving at an earlier - sometimes much earlier - point.
        　　    Like most of us hopeless optimists, Tom Foremski, the former Financial Times reporter who now runs the popular blog
        　　    Silicon Valley Watcher, (siliconvalleywatcher.com) isn't a fan of sellouts. And he's particularly annoyed with those
        　　    who have an idea so good that it could really threaten existing players. It's something he calls "blackmail"
        　　    innovation: threatening to stir things up with a revolutionary technology before selling it to the very people you
        　　    were planning to line up against the wall. These startup thugs, he suggests, simply hold companies to ransom rather
        　　    than aim to fulfil their potential. It's a form of hi-tech heist.
        　　    According to Foremski, Ribbit - which simplifies communications between computers and phones and sold itself to BT
        　　    for ￡53m last week - was a perfect example of blackmail innovation in action. Here was an idea that pitched itself
        　　    as an industry-destroying disruptor (the company's tagline was "Silicon Valley's first phone company") before
        　　    eventually swooning over the size of the sum it got.
        　　    On one hand, it's a fair comment, but on the other it's a tough point to argue - particularly since the place where
        　　    the line gets drawn can shift depending on where you are standing. For some companies, selling for a million quid is
        　　    a great idea; for those with the chance to be the next Microsoft or Google, anything short of world domination is
        　　    giving in too early. Offering your telecoms business to BT might seem like feeding your baby to a shark, but not all
        　　    those accused of being sellouts are ditching their optimism. What happens if the purchasing power is, in itself, a
        　　    disruptor?
        　　    After all, when Google flexes its muscles and buys a young, innovative-looking company, it can be hard to tell if
        　　    it's acting as an incubator for change or just a crusher of startup dreams. For every Dodgeball or Jaiku (parcelled
        　　    off and stuck on a shelf) there's an Applied Semantics (now the cornerstone of Google's profits). Whether it's a
            
            

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        　　    shark or not depends on where you're standing.
        　　    The truth is that innovation blackmail and selling out is becoming an increasingly attractive option. With the
        　　    world's financial outlook so torrid that even the most strapping City magnates are being shrivelled up by paranoia
        　　    and turned into tiny human prunes, we can't expect much different. Nobody gets into the startup business just to be
        　　    average. You've got to have big ambitions: change the world, make a fortune, get famous - or perhaps all three. The
        　　    scrutiny that young dotcoms are under means very few entrepreneurs are simply hoodlums who think they'll blackmail
        　　    their way to a retirement fund. But there are two real exit strategies for a startup founder: to flip or float.
        　　    Option two is disappearing fast, with the parlous nature of the stock market meaning that the number of flotations
        　　    is drying up, while the looming recession means that the chance to flip might not come again. It's easy to feel
        　　    righteous and indignant and shake our fists when the people behind our favourite startup sell up earlier than we
        　　    wanted them to. Perhaps it's not blackmail, but simply pragmatism. After all - honestly, right now, if there were
        　　    ￡53m on the table, would you do any different?