[mildbow]

How big a deal really, in the grand scheme of things, is the destruction of personal finances in your early 20s to 30s? If it helps, compare starting a startup to getting a PhD or MBA etcs. In most other skilled professions, people start actually having a career in their 30s anyway.

When you think about loss, consider things you can recoup vs things you can't.

You can recoup money. You can't recoup ... well .. pretty much anything else.

[HiLo]

Considering most on average do fail, most people will never recover from this financial damage before they die, particularly later in life when the differences are most pronounced and the marginal dollar is much more valuable due to rising health-care cost and dwindling income. So finance says you're wrong on that one.

You really can't recoup the money. $1,000 invested at 23 is worth $37,165 at 75, assuming 7.2% historical equity risk premium. $1,000 invested at 30 is worth $22,844 at 75 with the same 7.2% growth.

Your comment seems to imply that people can strike it rich if they just pull the level enough times, but your comment is actually false for the majority of people that read your post.

[mildbow]

Yeah, I know about compound interest. Truly.

What I was trying to say is money can mostly be made up even if you don't strike it rich. Same amount of money? Maybe not. But enough to have the same order lifestyle as you would otherwise? Definitely. I was trying to allude to this by referencing other professions where they don't really start until their 30s.

Consider also that you seem you think of money as something that you accrue strictly as a function of time. If you are doing retirement planning strictly based on your 401k, then you probably aren't planning that well. Lots of things that worked for our parents won't pan out well for us. Ask non-STEM majors looking for jobs in the past decade.

Anyway, starting a startup solely to get in the game/get rich is a losing proposition modulo how connected you are.

My point was the negatives, as a founder, are probably constrained to monetary ones. Which at the end of the day isn't that bad of a deal. It's just money. Which makes it a very well leveraged bet IMO.

[jasonmcalacanis]

I think that's a great point. The time to do this is before you have huge commitments to things like... ummm.... babies... and mortgages.... and spouses....

If you go broke and you know how to code, sell or build product you can recover quickly by parking yourself at Google or Facebook for a year or two.

There is little downside to trying in your 20s UNLESS you go into massive debt (defined as 1-2x your expected yearly salary)