There're certainly people that take on debt as a calculated risk because they believe it'll pay off in the future. My parents did that to send me to college, and it did pay off. But when it fails, they usually just go "Well, shit," and fall back on their contingency plans for how to handle it if it fails. If it's a calculated risk, they've been making those plans, right?
But the fact that there's a startup out there to solve this problem (several, actually, but this one seems more above-board than the alternatives on the radio) indicates that this wasn't a calculated risk for many people. The essence of a calculated risk is that you go into it having done all the due diligence you need to weigh the possible consequences, and then make your calculations based on that. What's there for this startup to sell if people have already done that?