[tomblomfield]

I can't help but feel that there's some sample bias going on here.

Each example given is an person who is currently well-known for being an entrepreneur. By definition, they haven't moved on to something else.

There's a tonne of people who've succeeded as an entrepreneur and then gone onto something else; venture capital (in fact most VCs partners are ex-entrepreneurs), politics or philanthropy, for example.

The point is that these people are now known for something other than entrepreneurship, so they don't spring to mind as examples of one-time-entrepreneurs.

/rant

[swombat]

Can you name a handful? I don't argue that there are no such people, but I don't think there's a tonne of them.

[prof_hobart]

I know more than one person who's quit their day job, started up a business, made a few million pounds and then retired. They won't be anyone that you, or I suspect anyone else on here, knows. They are simply people I've worked with.

And that's the thing. The ones that become mega-famous are typically the ones who have been around for an extended period of time - either through having spent the time building a single successful company (Bill Gates, Zuckerberg etc), or people who become well known for starting up multiple companies. If Bill Gates had retired 4 years after starting up Microsoft, how many people would even know his name now?

Rather than trying to identify people who've famously walked away after a few years and comparing them to the number of famous people who didn't, a far better measure would be to find random 20 entrepreneurs who have only been doing it for a couple of years and see how many of them are still doing it, either with the same company, or with a new company, in 10 years time.

[KingMob]

The very fact that you don't know them could support the point. In science, this is known as survival bias.

It's a mistake to argue that the entrepreneurs you read and hear about must be representative of all entrepreneurs. It's quite likely that the ones most likely to become serial entrepreneurs will remain visible, and the ones who stop after a successful exit are less likely to remain in the field.

[lrobb]

Quite right. There's a lot of people that just start one business and then stay with it for the rest of their working life. Then there's a lot of people that start something, decide that it's not for them, then go back to join a company. If your news only comes from techcrunch and venturebeat, you're missing out on these stories.

[tomblomfield]

Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Robin Klein, Bill Gates, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, Niklas Zennström

[swombat]

Marc Andreessen: cofounded Netscape and then OpsWare and Ning and now is a VC. Serial to the max.

Ben Horowitz: Opsware and then VC. A Morten Lund character.

Bill Gates: already addressed in both the article and another comment

Silvio Berlusconi: I don't know much about his business history, but a quick glance at his Wikipedia page shows he started multiple businesses. Definitely not a one-business-and-retire type.

Michael Bloomberg: Ok, that one may be an example.

Niklas Zennström: Skype, Kazaa, Joltid, Joost, and now a VC. Serial to the max.

[amirmc]

With people like Gates you could also argue that they create 'new' startups through their existing organisations. Why wouldn't you if you have a brand, distribution, etc that were hard-won?

Also, Gates went on to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is arguably a different kind of startup.

[teebs]

Even Bloomberg is almost a serial entrepreneur. Effective, memorable politicians must be to some extent entrepreneurial--you have to believe in your own ability to create change and to unify people behind your cause.

[technotony]

Mitt Romney (who founded Bain capital), Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar to name a few

[swombat]

Romney might be a rare exception - though it is debatable whether he ever ran a startup by the typical definition, since from inception, Bain Capital was pretty damn big.

Bill Gates I've addressed in my article. If Bill Gates had been kicked out of MS in, say, 1985, he would most likely have done what Steve Jobs did, and started another business.

As for Pierre Omidyar, he has started something called Civil Beat, an online news service, as well as Omidyar Network, which is an investment firm, which would put him halfway between the typical case and a Morten Lund case.