What if you are incredibly happy with your leadership position at your start-up, are not too concerned about living a wealthier life, and don't see yourself building something else?
This question determines whether I want to raise money since VCs / angels always ask, "What's your exit strategy?".
So you have to balance between two views:
a.) Raise money, allowing your operation to possibly grow more because of this, a broader network through the investors for partnerships/advice, and coming to grips with the fact that you will have to sell or your investors will push you for it. Understand that if you are acquired (low chances, but just saying), you will have to work for a behemoth company, and judging from the amount of founders that leave a short while after being acquired, being an employee of one of those companies can hardly be described as exhilarating. Also understand that if you were bought out, you will have more cash in the next 5 years (if you did nothing with it) than if you were to stay at your start-up providing yourself a salary for the next 5 years, even taking into account increased salary from growing the company (without VC money) during those years.
b.) Don't raise money, keep living off your salary (if any), reduce the direct and indirect transaction costs of having investors, and possibly lower growth opportunities (no money to hire more staff, etc..).
So anybody here not looking forward for an exit?
As for why, it is because the work we're doing (a particular style of video game) is unproven in the market, and we need to be able to take substantial risks, again and again, where we stand to lose a lot of money. We can't afford to have any external interests guiding these decisions. We're doing this work for love of the work, so an exit would be ridiculous.