An acquisition is always a failure
No, no, a thousand times no.  This is complete bullshit.  I'm sorry, but you lost me at:<p><i>The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders.</i><p>Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali Lama, not Zoroaster or the Easter Bunny or President Obama or the sterno bum at the corner of 3rd and Main, not Sergey Brin, not Kevin Rose, but NOBODY has any standing to tell <i>me</i> what <i>my</i> "proper ambition is."  Why? Because "fuck you", that's why.  You don't know me, my life, my past, my future, my dreams, my fears, my hopes, my goals or a goddamned other thing about me.  Don't f%!#ng try to tell me what I ought to aspire to.<p>Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD.  The other option is to stay independent and maybe, <i>maybe</i> eventually IPO.   It's easy to sit on the sidelines and say "Go for the IPO, don't sell, selling is a failure".  But you know what... maybe I need the money <i>right now</i> to do some things I always wanted to do.  Maybe I want to buy my aging mother a new house, and I don't want to wait for a bloody IPO, I want to do it <i>now</i>.  Maybe I have a family member who needs special medical care, or - fuck it - maybe I just want to cash out, fly to Scotland, and spend the rest of my life looking for a 6' tall, redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent to marry.<p>In any case, no, you don't get to tell me that I failed, if I choose to pursue what matters to <i>me</i>.<p>Look, I get the point... I agree that - <i>in general</i> - entrepreneurs <i>would</i> want to stay independent, and <i>would</i> prefer to wait.  I don't relish the idea of building a company and then selling it... but life is more complicated than that.  And life is a series of tradeoffs and a constant balancing act between doing what is best for us <i>right now</i> versus what is best for the future.  One is not a failure for making a rational, reasoned decision to favor one set of priorities over another.