[byrneseyeview]

A kid that has nothing to begin with and turned it into something. That is inspiring. That is why rags to riches is a literary device.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that people who start startups are those who could succeed in other fields, but turn down the steady paycheck for the chance to do their own thing. There certainly are people who started a company because Microsoft wouldn't hire them, but there are plenty more who were hired by Microsoft and realized that they could capture more of the benefits of what they were doing if they set out on their own. Rags-to-riches is a literary device because big-paycheck to big-IPO-payday is not quite so compelling -- and because there's a bigger audience of people who want to believe, and want to be told to believe, that they can succeed despite prior failures.

They can always get another high paying job.

But they can't get back the time they lost, and when that time is worth six figures with a high growth rate, that's a huge cost. In one of his essays, Paul Graham made the point that starting a startup is just barely more expensive than being unemployed -- the flip side of which is that it's not such a huge risk to start one, if you're unemployed. If you do have a job, it's more of a sacrifice.