Exit delay is an important problem for entrepreneurs as well as managers, however it is not well understood. One reason for the limited understanding is that rational theories of delay and behavioral theories of delay both anticipate that delay increases with the magnitude of sunk cost and the degree of uncertainty. Accordingly it is difficult to disentangle the two forms of delay. Further within behavioral delay, there has been limited effort to isolate which of the numerous proposed mechanisms underpin it. We attempt to do both by conducting a laboratory experiment for which optimal exit is well-defined and in which an entrepreneur group with equity stakes is compared to an advisor group whose compensation was based only on quality. The experiment yields three findings. First, we find that equity stakes induce both rational delay and behavioral delay. Entrepreneurs with equity stakes have near optimal exit thresholds, but they have more pronounced asymmetric updating than advisors. Second these differen...