Such a sale often takes place through a public stockmarket.At one end of the business are the venture capitalists (VCs) who try to get in on the ground floor, building companies from nought.
Such emphasis on tax reductions, mixed with pressures for government to make cuts across the board, is putting at risk the wave that America's VCs have surfed on for the past 50 years.
Government investments created the low-hanging fruit VCs could pick.
And some of the state's VCs are keen to spend the cash they made from the internet on improving the world.
"It's always better for VCs to be close to their portfolio firms.
And contrary to public perception, says Diane Mulcahy, one of the authors, venture capitalists (VCs) do not take a lot of risk.
As with other forms of private equity, VCs usually find their exit (and hence their reward) by floating off investments through an IPO.
Dollar Shave Club, a fledgling firm that wants to change the way folk buy shaving gear, has just raised over $1m of seed funding from some of Silicon Valley's best-known VCs, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz.The financiers are working themselves into a lather because personal grooming is a huge business.
When the dotcom bubble burst, says Mr Lane at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Silicon Valley, those early ASPs collapsed "because we VCs wouldn't invest in them any more".The second generation, however, seems to have cracked the problem of integration, thanks to web services, and is now picking off segments of the software market one by one.
VENTURE capitalists (VCs) are obsessed with cutting-edge technologies.
"VCs and entrepreneurs are not as professional as they are in Silicon Valley," says Sachio Semmoto, the entrepreneur behind a series of successful Japanese telecoms firms.
