Although there are certainly some entrepreneurs who do everything in anticipation of a big reward in the end, this isn't true for me or for any of the entrepren

Although there are certainly some entrepreneurs who do everything in anticipation of a big reward in the end, this isn't true for me or for any of the entrepreneurs I know. It's the work itself that's rewarding. It's creating something from nothing that's rewarding. It's having happy users and customers that's rewarding. The "reward of a distant payoff" theory outlined in the blogpost indeed only explains serial entrepreneurs, not why people start companies in the first place. But this is strange. We have no concepts like "serial painter" or "serial poet". We think it's only natural that people who feel compelled to paint still feel compelled to paint 5 years or a decade later, and it's the same for nearly any other endeavor. Entrepreneurship isn't different, and I can't think of any reason why we would expect it to be. So when successful entrepreneurs choose not to try again I expect this to be for other mundane reasons: wanting to spend more time with the family, to catch up on stuff they missed out on, to travel, or to pursue other dreams.