I didn't get that impression at all. After all, Derek wrote this post in 2009, and if you follow the links, the company he rushed back from the hot springs to found seems to have gone nowhere.
All he's really saying is 'you need to be executing on your ideas to be happy, not just thinking about them.' Which is true for a lot of people, myself included.
The "playpen" or "sandbox" itself doesn't have to be "wildly" successful, but the entrepreneur must have the wherewithal to launch a company with a sufficiently large team to execute all those ideas. This entails either a successful exit for a prior business or pre-existing resources. It is possible to do so without such resources, but that would mean a much smaller vision and more limited sandbox.
It is interesting that for the entrepreneur the business becomes play. Meanwhile, for the employees, it is often still work. I wonder how this affects the work-life balance. Since it is the entrepreneur's passion and vision, he or she may very well not desire the same balance the team needs.
> All he's really saying is 'you need to be executing on your ideas to be happy, not just thinking about them.' Which is true for a lot of people, myself included.
Oh, sure, I don't doubt that's true for many people, it's true for me as well. However, in order to easily test various things, you need to have a lot of people/datapoints to work with.
It's amazing if you have a product that many people want to use and resources with which to bring your ideas to life, but most people who own companies are probably too busy getting those companies to profitability (or improving it) to try any big ideas.
It seems to me that the author had the liberty and ability to try new things a lot (look at the experiments he lists), which requires a good team, an audience to test your idea with, etc...
However, in order to easily test various things, you need to have a lot of people/datapoints to work with.
I don't know, I've built lots of things that look amazing in my head, but appear far less amazing once I've actually implemented it. While I am just a single data point, the process can provide enough information to realize that it was a bad idea.
I will agree that having more data points has its place, but building it just for yourself is often worth it.
All he's really saying is 'you need to be executing on your ideas to be happy, not just thinking about them.' Which is true for a lot of people, myself included.