Hal Halladay at Leader Notes made a great observation about Seth Godin's commentary on leadership in an entrepreneurial setting. The point seems to be that even a great entrepreneur may not be the right person to lead the business as it matures.
All entrepreneurs want to believe that they are the next Steve Jobs, able to launch a new venture in the garage and lead a Fortune 500 company. It is important to remember that Steve didn't stay in the saddle from start to finish at Apple. Do you remember NeXT, Steve Jobs venture between stretches at Apple? A Wikipedia entry notes that "NeXT as a whole gained a reputation for failure that would never rub off."
The conclusion I draw from Steve Jobs's NeXT experience, is that the lessons learned by that "failure" helped prepare him for the successes he's had since at Apple and Pixar.
Do you have a "failure" in your history that prepared you for a later, greater success?
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