Silicon Valley celebrates the massive exits and the brilliant entrepreneurs behind them. There's Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Snap's Evan Spiegel, Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Twitter's Evan Williams, just to name a few.

But the overwhelming majority of start-up founders are a lot more like Paul Edmondson than any of the aforementioned celebrities.

Edmondson poured 12 years of money, sweat and tears into HubPages. He raised $8 million from venture capitalists in the early days before hitting a wall — and then another wall — and then falling out of favor with tech's financiers.

On Friday morning, Edmondson finally got his exit. HubPages, a collection of websites that cover topics ranging from pets and cars to healthy living, was acquired by a Seattle-based content company named Maven, which has a market value below $70 million and a stock that trades over-the-counter (OTC).

Terms of the deal weren't fully disclosed, but the general structure calls for HubPages' investors to get $5 million and for company founders and employees to receive a combination of cash and shares that could be worth another $10 million to $15 million, based on performance metrics and stock appreciation over the next three years.

The story didn't get any pickup, not even from the reliable tech blogs. Edmondson called to tell me about the deal, not so much because he wanted a story, but because we've spoken many times in recent years about the deep existential challenges that companies like his face in a world where so much traffic comes from Google search.

Edmondson was excited because he'd found a home for himself and his 32 employees (including eight that start on Monday) and he's giving them a chance to own stock with potential upside.

"When you're trapped inside small private companies, you don't have a way for you or your employees to get liquid," Edmondson said. He added that he's been paying himself a "below-market salary."

Edmondson's team will double the size of Maven, which similarly operates a network of websites on topics from chocolate to economics. Both companies have been trying to build a business that can survive without reliance on Google and Facebook, which control about two-thirds of the U.S. digital ad market, according to eMarketer.

• HubPages struggled for over a decade as an independent publisher.
• The company raised $8 million between 2007 and 2008 but that was it.
• Selling to Maven gives HubPages' investors a mild payout and allows employees to get stock in a publicly traded company.