John Battelle is looking for an executive to run Federated Media.  A few years ago, he wrote:

I’ve learned what I am good at - starting things, getting them to a certain size. I don’t do so well at running ongoing businesses where the expectation is that lots and lots of money should be made. I find that a bit uninteresting (though others of course find it fascinating), and should the company get to that stage, it’s best to let the professional managers take over, whether that means selling … or bringing in someone who lives to manage media properties. I want to be upfront about that with everyone I might work with, so there you have it.

A couple of years ago, I wrote:

Say you were an entrepreneur and someone came to you and:- offered you $10M in funding but asked that you had to stay on for 3 years as a condition. Three years isn’t long, but it is an eternity online. YouTube went from URL registration to $1.65B in about 18 months…

- alternatively, what if someone else came to you and offered you $10M in funding but insisted you had to step aside and make room for their new hand-picked CEO.

Would you accept either offer? I think I would. Truth is, I think which offer you prefer has a lot to do with your state of mind.

(…)

Interestingly, if you wake up wanting to get the hell out of your company and do something else, I think because life is funny, then you are bound to stumble upon an investor who will tie you down forever as a condition of investing.

Alternatively, if remaining the captain was all you ever wanted and all that was important to you, I am pretty sure that someone would come along and insist that you make room for a new leader…

Trust me, life is odd that way.

(…)

In life, you usually want what you can’t have and when you have something, you want something else. Trust me, it’s just the way life works…

So true.

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