[efuquen]

In terms of what you said about risk, I think most of the time when people talk about a startup being a risk what they mean is that the business itself is risky, that it's most likely going to fail. While sometimes it might be the case most of the time I don't think people are talking about any personal or financial risk to the founders, though that's just my perception and what I've always understood it to be meant when people talked about risk in a startup. Of course, a founder can definitely take on some personal or financial risk in a startup but I've rarely seen or heard of cases like that, when we talk about startups most of the time we talk about some sortof VC funded entity. Although plenty of small businesses are funded by the business owner, but most small businesses aren't really "startups" either.

Finally, there is the risk of failure to the founders, which can be quite demoralizing and possibly personally devastating, especially if it's the first time. I think how much a failure would impact someone just depends on their personality and how easily they can mentally move on, even if it didn't have any major financial impact. I mean, it is quite a bit of time and effort that could be wasted on something that ultimately fails; unless you view it as a learning experience and draw the right lessons and are able to move on to the next thing, whether it's another startup or more stable employment at a company that already went through the risky phase and won.