[buro9]

If you're an employee then the differences are not so great and you can spend time debating the minutia.

If you're a founder, the risks are real and the costs significant. You'll probably earn little to nothing, for a great expenditure of time, effort and emotional investment, for a very long time, all the while knowing that you could've been earning money/pension/progression elsewhere.

There's absolutely no guarantee (in fact the odds are very heavily against) that you'll even come out the other side having much to show. You may have positioned yourself for a career as an employee elsewhere, but whatever monetary benefits follow are unlikely to make up the losses incurred as a founder of a startup.

And then there's the dark times along the way...