Yes on the risk, fully disagree on the reward part. And i am not talking about the reward of being able to focus on the business rather than raising money.
I am talking about cold hard cash. In a successful small business, many owners will make mid 6 figures, year in, year out, and still many will make 7 figures. After a few year, it beats a lot of exits. And there are many many more of those than the few IPO / big acquisition we can read about. Even with IPOs, the remaining share of the founder sometimes makes me sorry for them.
VCs don't publicize that though, understandably.
I do agree with you on the rest of the comment. The mean return for a highly leveraged approach is probably lower than the mean return for organic growth startups.
The VC story only matches a few cherry-picked examples.
What I mean is that absence from the media is not non-existence.