[adrianhoward]

Maybe looking at what's VC funded is a mistake - but that seems an fairly small chunk of the startup community. Even in this effervescent time. Where most of the noise is, of course, but there are a stack of people bootstrapping products, or starting small dev or design agencies, or consulting. Lots of other ways to start and build businesses, and many lessons to learn outside of the VC funding bun-fight.

(I also question anybody who has a generic career goal of "startup founder" - they're probably heading for trouble anyway :-)