[Alex3917]

> the risk-reward is clearly easier for VCs who can hedge their bets across multiple startups and earn nice salaries regardless

That's only a small percentage of investors who have basically already won though. Right now there is a local startup accelerator for pretty much every city worldwide with more than 250k residents, plus at least one for every major college town (e.g. Madison or Ithaca). So there are easily 500+ total, maybe even a couple thousand at this point depending on what you count. The vast majority of those have made dozens of investments without even a single major exit.

Most of the folks drawing a salary are getting paid far less than you'd make as a decent developer, and many aren't even getting paid at all. The folks on 20-minute VC talking about how they got started after making a few million as hobby investors are about as representative of the average investor's experience as Mark Zuckerberg is of the average junior PHP developer's experience.