It's no surprise that someone who starts a landscaping or property management company, where the prime thing being sold is hours of labor, would have a higher 5/10 year survival rate than a company selling bits, ads, or other types of digital engagement.
A quick search turned this up:
http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/09/failure-rates-by-sector-th...
This shows all business types following roughly the same trend. 'services' [which would include software and property management] have the lowest 5 yr survival rate at 36% and mining the highest at > 50%.
This is data is from the 2010 census, examining businesses started in 2005 - likely a different methodology than the SBA used. This which probably accounts for the discrepancy from my SBA stats in the original post.
The number of businesses that can be supported in the physical world is dramatically higher than for Internet services. Why? Geographic restriction and franchising.
There are going to be two dozen major cloud hosting companies, and maybe 50-100 smaller players. There are 7,000 frozen yogurt shops.
It would be great to have data on this. How many SMB owners make a few hundreds $K a year, for many years, ending up making a lot more than a very successful/lucky early employee making a couple of $M in one shot after many years. Especially in the software field.
This suggests that creating a business with the intent of not exiting, but retaining and growing it gives better odds. While a more typical small business has its own stressors and certainly can have long hours, in my experience the level of intensity is much more sustainable.
The down side - you're much less likely to walk away with large sums of money. On the up side, you're much more likely to create a sustainable venture that has a lot more success paths than the binary 'get acquired or go public' routes available to vc-funded startups.
[1] pdf - https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf