The Decision to Sell...

and the Reasons Why We Entrepreneurs Do What We Do

I remember taking the call in the summer of 2022 with one of my trusted advisors while in my car in the parking lot of Wake Med Hospital in Cary. My Mom, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease years earlier, had just suffered her second fall at home and had to have hip replacement surgery, which she was recovering from in the hospital. It was a hot summer day and even though the AC was running, I felt the discussion getting heated. My advisor was encouraging me to talk with his banker to start an exploratory process to sell my company, but I was reluctant, saying our financials were in no way ready to go through the process – “now is not a good time to go to market,” I remember myself saying. But I also knew that as I was saying that, sitting in my car in the hospital parking lot, things were changing. Dad was going to need more help with Mom as she started down the path of rehab, and her Alzheimer's was going to complicate matters. I wanted so much to be more available to help, but work was keeping me from being fully present. Just a couple months before, my brother had moved back with his wife and young son from Shanghai, China, ostensibly to escape the onerous Covid restrictions there, but more to the point, to be with Mom in what could be her final months with us.

Christmas with the Shihs, December 2023

We entrepreneurs start and build companies for different reasons, and that reason can change over time. Originally my "Why" for starting and running BRI was to help Dad commercialize some patents that he developed through his research at NC State University, and in the process learn how biotechnology companies get started and grow. But over time, that purpose changed into various things, including building financial stability for my family, using company growth or metrics to measure my self-worth, or creating a company of value that meant something for the people who worked there. But ultimately for me it was a personal endeavor, a learning journey, a chance to do something for myself and my family. And so when I was sitting there that hot summer afternoon in the hospital parking lot having a heated discussion with my advisor about starting a process to sell the company, I told myself - it’s time. I had had a good run at the casino, had some pretty good luck, and it was time to cash in some chips. It was time to sell, for me, for my parents, for the BRI share­holders who had waited patiently for this moment. We had built something from nothing, a multinational, multimillion dollar enterprise selling animal nutrition products in over 45 countries around the world. We had achieved success for the company far beyond our initial dreams, albeit on a timeline that extended from years into decades. But it was the American Dream our American dream, one that started when my Father, a hardworking studious scientist from Taiwan, came to the US in the late 1960’s to pursue his graduate studies at Cornell Unversity, started and raised his family in America, and never looked back. And my Mom, she’s still with us, Thank God, and after the sale I’ve been able to be there for my Dad and my family in a way that I had always wanted to be.