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On HN, patio11, edw519, peldi & jacques have all shared success stories before. I am interested to know more.
EDIT : By success, I mean happiness in life & financial independence to do interesting things in life.
If you get to know some of the people personally you will find a lot of successes.
The real question is: what would be a success for you? If you want to do something, when would be the point where you could say: Success! If you can really answer this question, the path to reach this point is not that complicated, but the question is hard to answer and you will change your mind quite often (at least, this was/is my case).
I wrote the code, designed the websites, wrote the documentation, and once supported all of the products myself. Some took weeks, others took years (Hero, formerly Caribou CMS), but I'm very happy with where they are at now. We have our niche - e-commerce and recurring billing for small business - and it's been growing well.
I humbly consider it a success because, at 23 years old, I've been able to delegate the everyday stuff to a hired developer/support tech, take a nice salary, and do my PhD in Cognitive Psychology!
I technically have what some people might consider a co-founder, but he's more of an investor/advisor as I've been the only person that's involved day-to-day.
I also created a presentation recently that summarized what the experience has been like and what we've done right or wrong for our situation. (http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com)
Finally, I'd also recommend Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard as a good source. He discusses a little bit of his experience on the Pinboard blog. (http://blog.pinboard.in/)
I was (and still am) hugely inspired by DHH's presentation at Startup School 08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY