"Founders do give up at some stage," says Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder, Indian Angel Network. "Globally, very few founders take a company from start to initial public offering (IPO)”

For most founders, the realization that they can't scale comes very early," he adds. Fantastic entrepreneurial success passes into folklore; but not so the nine out of 10 startups that don't go public. Studies show that less than 1% of startups go on to public listing. There were 738 venture capital (VC)-backed exits and 637 VC-backed M&As in the US in 2014. Less than 50 made it to the IPO stage. Most startup founders prefer to merge with or sell their companies to larger corporations.

"An entrepreneurial journey is very personal," says Niren Shah, managing director, Norwest Venture Partners. "There's a thing in Silicon Valley,making your first $1 million. Many just give up at that stage rather than go on to become very large companies," he adds.

Valerie Wagoner, founder of ZipDial, which was recently acquired by Twitter, echoes this statement : "Given Twitter's ambition in India and emerging markets, our team and platform can achieve more, faster and at a bigger scale by being part of Twitter."

Vikas Saxena, co-founder of Nimbuzz, which was recently bought over by New Call, agrees: "New Call telecom shared a bigger vision with us. New Call is putting up the largest public WiFi in India. Now we can grow further and faster."