A percentage is not a value.

Ownership is usually expressed as a percentage. 100% sounds better than 60%. Sixty sounds better than twenty. Looked at this way, giving away equity appears to mean losing something. But a percentage only describes how something is divided. It says nothing about what is being divided. Owning all of a business worth very little can be worth less than owning a small part of something substantial.

The same is true in reverse. Giving away equity is not automatically a good decision simply because the capital allows a company to become larger. If that capital funds losses without improving the underlying economics, the remaining shareholders may own a smaller percentage of essentially the same problem.

The more useful question is what the percentage bought.

Perhaps it allowed a better asset to be acquired. Perhaps it financed capacity that could not otherwise have been built. It may have brought expertise, distribution, time or access to a market. It may also simply have postponed the moment when a weak model had to confront itself.

And percentages themselves are not always equal. Debt may sit ahead of the equity. Different shareholders may have different rights. Control, liquidity and future dilution can make apparently identical ownership stakes behave very differently.

The number alone therefore tells remarkably little. Protecting a percentage at all costs can prevent value from being created. Giving it away too easily can transfer value that would have existed anyway. Ownership is a fraction.

Its value depends on what sits underneath it and what had to be exchanged to create it.