Regardless of whether you get acquired or not, if you build a company that won't persist without your individual presence, the process is still incomplete. (And what you really have is a vehicle for your individual talent.) Any company that's supposed to last more than a few years must be build so that it can handle key people leaving, because that's what people always do in the long term, one way or the other.
This reminds me of some quoted wisdom I heard back in the 80's about management styles and Star Trek: the difference between Picard and Kirk is that when Picard was away or taken over by an alien or what have you, the bridge crew could cope with the situation, while Kirk's absence meant that the Enterprise was utterly helpless.
If your team can't fight Romulans when you're down on the planet, you've failed as a manager, was the moral of the story.
