[choffstein]

I could not agree more. It's an irresponsible statement and should only be qualified by those entrepreneurs talking about how much money they started with.

Though, having been to 500Startups and seeing the amount of 20-somethings there, I can't imagine they had much to lose in the first place.

I don't see why this lie of having to put everything on the line is consistently perpetuated within the start-up ecosystem. Yes, start-ups are hard -- but I am getting tired of what seems like a consistently perpetuated lie so that start-ups can feed their own ego -- or worse, justify their failure.