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Ultimately it comes down to the question of "exit". As a founder, I have no interest in exit or liquidity. I am in business to run a business, not to run away f

Ultimately it comes down to the question of "exit". As a founder, I have no interest in exit or liquidity. I am in business to run a business, not to run away from it. Or as Warren Buffet puts it: Our favorite holding period is forever. I often get the impression that many people in the tech industry have not internalized that it's possible to make a successful business (and a lot of money) without taking investment. Or that it may be desirable to run and grow a business over a long time period like decades. While I don't have hard facts on this, I would expect that more entrepreneur wealth has been created through running businesses instead of exiting. Of the wealthy people that I personally know, this statement holds. But it seems reinforced regularly, for example with Gabriel's post yesterday analyzing how an entrepreneur would go about pocketing $5 million pre-tax on an exit.

all_elements 16y ago
Fully agree. I wonder if the McDonald's Vs. the local restaurant model applies here. To me it seems like quite a few local restaurateurs are wealthy and they don't have to scale massively to become millionaires. If you are just interested in running a small business and to serve a small section of the society you could still become wealthy, no? And the Web 2.0 (and the accompanying lower barrier of entry) brings perfect opportunities to follow this scheme. I know at least one friend who has a regular income from the App store following this model. But he is not a millionaire by any means. I am curious if there are really people out there who are wealthy simply by serving 20-50K people on the web with no potential/plan to scale. PS: This is not to say zoho follows this model by any means.