You can hold less than 50% in a large establishment. For the small one-man business, the more control you have, the better you can navigate towards success.When you start a new business, one of the hardest things to achieve in the beginning is the capital that you need to put into the business in order to get it off the ground. Generally when it comes to Capital you can be funded by one of three ways. The first way is to fund the business yourself. The second way is to take out a loan from the bank and then fund the business. And lastly you could possibly look at getting investors into the business. If you get investors into your business then you are essentially selling shares to your business, and they will have a specific amount of say in the operations of the business as well unless they are considered to be silent investors.
What do you think is a good percentage of shares that you should own in your own business and that you should sell out? I think that you should own at least 51% of your business if you are able to afford it because this will allow you to still be able to make decisions as to majority shareholder.