You get almost no money in salary, and you spend something way more valuable than money: time, during your most energetic and precious years of life typically. I think it’s really dangerous to put rose tinted glasses on the whole thing.

For anyone not upper class, if you spend 6 or so years chasing a startup and fail, and you’re a good software developer.. once you factor in savings and interest, your total opportunity cost is something like 2-4 million dollars. That’s making a good software dev salary for 6 years and saving some of it. That’s life changing for someone not already rich. And you’d still be learning a lot, plus working a much more relaxing job with time for side projects.