"The Bay Area prides itself on the sophistication of its investment structure, but most of the successful Web 2.0 'exits', from a founder perspective, have been non-Bay Area companies or ones that didn't raise too much cash.

Perhaps the further you are from Mountain View, the less likely you are as an entrepreneur, to be seduced by Bay Area style startup investment.

If you are in a casino and you are $5M up, the best thing you can do is walk away from the roulette table.

If you are a young entrepreneur $5M is a life changing experience and selling a company after bootstrapping or a seed round of investment can give you that. A series B round could very well give you more - but it is a much bigger gamble and as recent evidence suggests, puts you out of range of the big 5 (Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Ebay) without revenues, strong revenue predictions or extensive due diligence."