The middle ground is compelling too. Join someone else's startup, but only if it looks promising.

Small and medium sized businesses can represent an optimal solution once you factor in the influence you can have at this scale.

If you are truly gifted at what you do with technology, the SMB route is the best bet. The extremes of solo and mega corp will wear you down in their own special ways - doing too much and doing too little.

That is certainly true. There is a subtle difference between building a company that becomes attractive to acquirers and building one with the primary goal of being acquired. If the latter drives your decisions, you may optimize for acquisition criteria rather than customer value, which can take you away from PMF.