An exit is not universally defined as success. Success is defined by the person who builds the company.

>Success should be building and maintaining a business that can annually bring you in a ton of cash, keep you relatively sane, keep loads of people from your country's economy in employment and above all provide goods or services that will make someone else's life/work a little easier.

Selling my company allows me to do all those things (although my cash is coming in up-front, for the most part, which means I can likely grow that money a lot faster than I could have if I got it over many years).

To each his own...