[jpdoctor]

I'm going to guess that Jake will take a lot of flak here for this article, but the truth is: I agree with him, for a certain version of "success".

There are folks who will pursue money, and then an acquisition looks like a nice validation and exit. Great. No prob there.

But there are a bunch of folks who are satisfied when they are building, and any other mode feels like something is missing in life. My advice to this (my) cohort: Don't fight it, just accept that you're always going to need a project to obsess over. Odds are that project will be a failure but not as much as anything else that is not so much a "project" as "going to work in the morning."

[joonix]

You can keep building when you have $10M in the bank. You can build a lot of things, not just websites. You can build a hotel. There's so much out there to do. Working on the same thing my whole life sounds miserable.

[mindcrime]

Agreed (despite my response above). I know that if I built a company and then sold it for $10,000,000, that I would - indeed - feel some regret over that. But assuming it was the decision I needed to make in order to do other things that mattered to me, then the thing is... once I "cash out" of one company, I'm free to turn around and start another one! Maybe I want to take a break, do the Scotland thing, veg out for a year, and come back refreshed and re-energized and ready to rock. And guess what? Now I have the seed capital to start my new company and don't have to worry about figuring out how I'm going to finance the initial phases! Win-win.

And I am pretty sure that, in my own case, this is exactly what would happen. Because, yes, a natural born entrepreneur does always feel that drive to build and to create. But nothing says we can only have one creative outlet in our entire lifetimes!