Interesting. Now, I'm small-ball. Microscopic-ball, I imagine, compared to the stuff you've seen. But the two most serious offers I've gotten were on 9 month and two year timescales (I turned down the short one 'cause there was no way the buyer could have kept the company running after I left after 9 months. It was an okay deal for me, but I'm not going to just burn the company. I turned down the two year offer mostly because they weren't offering enough to make up for, as you put it, the opportunity cost of me sticking around. They wanted to own the company but wanted to keep paying me like I owned the company.)

But, it just seems to me that if they really are buying the company for the employees, and not for the company itself, they are going to want the employees for more than two years. Yeah, they have to make it worth the employee's time, but it doesn't seem like it's worth the employer's money if they only stick around for two years.

Oddly, both the offers for my company were presented to me as "really, we mostly want to hire you" - but the terms of both offers were such that I would have been nuts to stick around after my earn-out was up, so it's possible that they really just wanted the company and thought I'd be more receptive if they talked me up? If you know me, you'd find that strategy odd, but eh.