Wow. My post from yesterday generated a lot of comments, which is great. But in hindsight, I might have been clearer about the message: the message is not don't worry about the exit strategy ever, the message is focus on building a business first, and the exit will take care of itself when you have built that business and decided to exit.

Exits happen. They happen even when you don't plan them (Peoplesoft). Sometimes they don't happen when you do plan them (Infowave). The best exits are when a company gets BOUGHT, not when it gets SOLD. The best way to get bought is to create business momentum, and the best way to create business momentum is to focus on building a business. But more on that on another day.

(disclaimer: while I may not have captured the nuance of every situation below perfectly - I wasn't at each company for the entire process, I am less than 100 years old - they are generally correct, and that doesn't matter anyway. What matters is paying attention to the thinking process that happened every time. )

I haven't met Basil Peters, but we share a few common Facebook friends, so he must be a good guy.

Basil has recently been promoting the concept of thinking about exit strategies as a start-up, and I understand his perspectives in his role as an angel investor, but does that perspective serve entrepreneurs? I think the answer is no. Thinking about exit strategies is fine and good if you already have an existing business that is generating a few million in revenue. But for brand new start-ups, it is a big distraction away from building a business.

I started in the software industry only about eleven years ago and during that stint, I have had the privilege of working at or being a director of four companies that have had successful exits. What do they all have in common? Other than being successful, not one of them ended up exiting in the business that they contemplated when they first started the company.

And this is the rule, not the exception. If you are an entrepreneur, pick up a copy of Jessica Livingston's book, "Founders at Work." Read the interviews with Max Levchin (PayPal/Slide), Evan Williams (Blogger/Twitter), Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) and many others. Not one of them exited in the business that they started off trying to create.

What does that tell you? Doing a start-up is a lot like finding the unknown solution to an unknown problem. If you are iterating and working to find a profitable niche in the market, chances are that you will change your posture at least once, and your investors should be ready for that. If you are convinced that you are right and plan to be dogmatic proving that you are right to the market and to your investors, well, good luck (and be sure to stock up on the Tums).

So the question for entrepreneurs is simple, are you trying to build a business, or trying to make money? There is nothing wrong with either, but your bias should be to the former for a simple reason: if you focus on building a business, you will eventually make money, but if you focus on making money, you may not end up doing either.

I am actually going to prove my point: coming up, four highly personal case studies.