[natrius]

This makes no sense. I don't understand why the 37signals folks seem to willfully ignore that the amount of money that a successful acquisition gives a founder means you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life, including solving interesting problems. You can even solve interesting problems that aren't profitable to solve. Unless the company is almost guaranteed to be valuable enough for the foreseeable future that a sale (or other exit) will make you financially independent (e.g. Facebook), there comes a point where it is clearly better to sell the company.

Since the Mint acquisition seems to have inspired this series of posts, let's take a look at it. Mint is successful because banks have crappy online products. Banks are perfectly positioned to end Mint's customer growth, and there are several other competitors in the industry as well. There is not a particularly high chance that Mint will still be successful in 5-10 years. If it is successful, the marginal utility of the increased worth for the founders declines pretty rapidly. Selling now seems like it was clearly the best idea, and disproving that is going to take more than the false dichotomy this post presents.