Not quite a single-person exit but I think Plenty of Fish [1] is a great story -- one guy builds dating site, bootstraps to 75 people, sells for $575M with 100% ownership.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...
The forum is dead now and has been for many years. But it had its day. The guy who made and sold Indeed was a regular too as well as other pretty successful people, but it had a ... let's call it a certain vibe.
From what I briefly gathered, WickedFire is similar to today's WarriorForum.
Fun fact: Wickedfire was also around for the launch of "2girls1cup" (if you aren't familiar with this, do not google it) [1] and Riff Raff (now a top-100 artist, somehow... wtf) [2]
[0] http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/74544-plentyof...
[1] http://www.wickedfire.com/misc-products-software-services/16...
[2] http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-the-shit/163812-my-first-...
The thread wasn't full of people mocking him (wf wasn't like that back then) but people were telling him it's generally not a good idea and he should go niche instead. I've completely lost touch with all of my contacts from back then and I can't find the thread unfortunately, so you have to take it on my word, I guess.
A lot of the big players are still active and still making money. If you want an invite to a Skype group shoot me an email.
Basically Peter Thiel's contrarian perspective.
You're begging the question. It's only a signal that it's a great idea if everyone says no given that it is a great idea.
Usually, if all your feedback is negative, it's a red hot signal that you should be doing something else.
My point is, lazy conventional group wisdom is often wrong because it's invested in "the way things are." Mature industries are most vulnerable in my experience (personally, I have experience in the large and old-thinking parking and payment industries). Acceptance of "because that's not how things are done" blinds people to opportunities. The lazy majority are too quick to repeat that dismissal. This adds "weight" to a rejection, but little critical analysis. I have found it productive and profitable to often disagree and swim upstream. I recognize not all industries or product spaces are like this.
Simply put, you can't have it both ways. You can't both have people saying "no" and people saying "yes" mean that it's a good idea.
Unfortunately both the great ideas and the awful ideas look awful.
Lots of people join companies on bad terms either because they don't realize the terms are bad or because they're desperate for any kind of income. That doesn't absolve the company of any blame for mistreating its workers. (I'm not necessarily suggesting that PoF was actually giving bad terms, it's possible they were paying amazing salaries)
1. Startups face high frictional costs when selling their equity; providing equity grants along with lower salaries may help to avoid cash-flow problems arising from the inefficiency in the market.
2. In a early-stage startup with inexperienced employees, providing equity grants can remove much of the valuation risk from employees' wages; if they do exceptionally good work, they'll automatically be compensated more by virtue of the increased value of their equity. (This also provides an argument for vesting cliffs: If an employee does exceptionally poor work, they can be fired before the cliff and their compensation is effectively reduced to match the quality of the work they performed.)
3. Psychological biases result in people working irrationally hard for companies which they feel that they "own", even if their ownership share is extremely small.
4. In some cases there may be income tax arbitrage advantages.
It's more of dick move to hang worthless equity as a carrot in front of people who don't know any better. Salaries have no vesting periods, no dilution[1], and are presented in cash.
[1]: Outside of inflation :)
I'd say giving equity to employees when you have no clear interest in exiting, is a dick move.