I know several entrepreneurs, including in Germany, who made a lot more than 10Mio following a route like this. Usually they could code or sell, built an agency doing that, then used proceeds of those agencies to build products and then sold those businesses. They did not need to take on VC money because they were self funded, so they could sell a company for 100 mio, and take home 100 mio themselves. If you sell a VC funded company for 10 mio, you failed and probably didn't make any money (look up "liquidation preferences" if you want to know why).A specialization in a skill like Web Development, Copywriting or SEO + hard work might make it possible to become a millionaire over the years, but I did not find one current example of someone who built a 10 million euros net worth via this way.
A few thoughts:
- You analysed data on start-up exits. This data set is likely biased. Many company sales are not publicly recorded. This data set likely comes from a national association of Venture Capitalists. So of course every recorded exit would have VC investment. This isn't meant as a bad thing, just that the data was recorded for a different analysis than you are doing.
- Germany is traditional. German VCs are traditional and look at what has worked in the past. And German VCs invest in people like them. German VCs are overwhelming ex-consulting, ex-IB folks who spent a few years at a Rocket Internet company before they failed their own start-ups and became a VC. Also, rocket internet would recruit from consulting and IB, give these people "near" entrepreneur experiences and allow them to start.
- The data set and route you're looking at are the "tech start-up" route. This is not the route that most people on this forum would recommend. This type of route is high-risk - extremely high reward. Most routes advocated on this forum are medium risk - high reward and not needing investment.
You will not learn entrepreneurship at an IB or consulting job. You will learn how to work hard and deal with big corporates, these are valuable skills, but you'll still start from scratch as an entrepreneur. Funnily enough, you will also not learn entrepreneurship in business school, it's something you can only learn by doing.