I think if I will ever succeed in making my own dream company, I will sell it only when it is not making profit for me. At that point, no one will want to buy

I think if I will ever succeed in making my own dream company, I will sell it only when it is not making profit for me. At that point, no one will want to buy it from you. The goal for most startups is to either get big enough to go public, or get acquired by a bigger company. The second option is attractive because in theory you can use the resources of the bigger company to grow your startup at a much faster pace, and you don't have the risk of running out of funding. With today's startups getting by on a lot less funding than in the past (thousands to millions today vs tens of millions to hundreds of millions a decade ago), the road to IPO is a lot longer than the road to acquisition. I personally would rather bootstrap a startup or just take a small seed round and get acquired for $10-30 million (I believe these are called "dipshit companies") than raise round after round and doing an IPO 10 years out (risking having a competitor come along in that time and put me out of business).