alt Hacker News> The Yahoo founders left with never-fly-commercial money before re-joining the billionaire club by investing the money they had.
I think you're confusing people cashing out with actually creating a successful company. Yahoo is not what people would describe as flagship company, or pets.com or Ask Jeeves or myspace or Voat or whatever. The dotcom bubble made a lot of people rich, but most examples were at expense of bag holders.
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Yup, if you google what founders in those 'failures' did was that they pretty much jumped vc side or founded more companies and have had very successful career. Not mind boggling like Bezos or Brin but still very cool career.
taking the money and running is the dream of the VCs
if you believe the milton friedman approach to economics, a company has no other value in that what it can provide to the owner (shareholder)
take your millions while it burns and, as the parent said, never fly commercial again
No successful company is on top forever. Just take a look at the top companies 20 or 30 years ago: where are they now? Nowhere near the top.
You are the one confusing what success is.
If you go by current standings in the market, yes, Yahoo is no longer at the top. Yet Yahoo was one of the most valuable and influential tech companies in the late 90s, early 2000s.