Two Ways to Do Mergers and Acquisitions?

  So I've been thinking, aside from graduating from a good MBA school and going to work as an investment banker or for a private equity firm, I figure there are two ways to do mergers and acquisitions. Actually, it's more one way, but two different methods of doing it. Basically, by building companies in relatively fragmented industries. You start with a central company, build it up some, then begin to make mergers and acquisitions of other companies in the industry. As you make the acquisitions, you then work to make the whole operation more efficient (say all the acquired companies have their own accounting, financial, etc..departments, so you centralize these types of functions so all companies use the same financial, accounting, etc...departments, which streamlines operations for the firm).
     Now as I see it, there are two different ways to go about building companies via mergers and acquisitions. One is via taking the core company public in order to acess the capital markets, and then using the stock in order to begin making strategic acquisitions in order to grow the company. The second is via starting your own private equity firm and using the money investors have entrusted with you in order to build the portfolio companies you have acquired.
     Not being a person who likes to be bossed around, the first one I am very unsure of, because once you become CEO of a publicly-traded company, you are now responsible for a huge amount of the public's money, and thus must constantly answer to stock analysts, shareholders, a board of directors, and so forth. And you likely will also have to focus on increasing the quarterly profits, which means focusing on the short-term, instead of the long-term. None of this sounds attractive to me. Instead of remaining an entrepreneur, you become a corporate bureaucrat (or you can become one).
     The alternative model is the private equity fund. In this model, you do have to answer to investors, but it is a lot more private than with a publicly-traded corporation. You do not have to answer to shareholders, worry about stock analysts, and so forth. You can focus on taking a long-term view for the business you are growing. In fact, this is one of the primary benefits and purposes of private equity firms: to take publicly-traded companies that can be in dire straits, bring them under what is a form of private ownership, and then allow the management to focus on creating long-term value and growth for the company so that it can recover, then the private equity firm can either sell the company, or they can take it public via an IPO, or they can hold onto it as well.
     One of the things private equity funds/firms have been doing as of late is consolidating fragmented industries, basically buying a company and then making a bunch of acquisitions (or even buying a group of companies and "rolling them up" into a single firm). So private equity is definitely an alternative way to pursue building companies via mergers and acquisitions. An entrepreneur can do it via the publicly-traded model, or via the private equity model if they are able to start their own private equity firm through which they can then do this.
     The private equity model is by no means a guarantee such investments will work however (or the publicly-traded model), as there have been some private equity disasters as well.