@redacted‌ - can you expand on the part about making it more challenging to have partners? Is this more related to growth equity partners to expand the business aftter closing?

I started the process, also with Guidant, but didn't finish because the deal fell through in due diligence. You are correct about the C-corp. That's required. The other thing that came up was partnerships/investors. I was told that I needed to maintain at least 80% ownership of the company. That wasn't a problem for me, but it does limit the deals you can do and how much investment you can take later. Another thing to consider is that when you do sell the company, all the shares that you bought through ROBS have to go back to the IRA/401K they came from. This sounds good because you don't pay capital gains when you sell. But all that money will now be taxed at your current rate when you withdraw. If you didn't do a ROBS and sold the company, there are ways to make that exit event nontaxable on the whole (perhaps dependent on the industry). So, if you use ROBS there is a chance that you may be making a nontaxable event taxable (even though it doesn't appear that way on the surface). You should really understand the tax implications before you do this. The bigger the exit, the bigger the tax effects to consider.