Right, but you can always just walk away from it all. It's not the same as a student loan.
Companies going public spell this out in detail in their disclosures, which practically shout "do not put money into this". And those companies almost invariably have cracked 9 figures of revenue!
You can also walk away from a student loan; if you go teach English in small Asian villages for the rest of your life, it's not like they'll sent in a SEAL team to extract you.
And you can certainly walk away from regular loans by declaring bankruptcy. Provided you're prepared to have that on your record and on your conscience. And deal with the many years of consequences.
It's the same thing with investor money. Legally, at any point you can just shut down the company, return whatever's left in the bank, and call it a day. But there's more to it than the legality.
That said, since it seems like half of hacker news imagines that VCs are something akin to loan sharks. Maybe the new breed of angel investors really are putting an emotional squeeze on founders these days? When I worked at startups, the investors were very hands off unless the founders were really mishandling things. However, I've been out of the scene for a few years, and there seem to be a whole lot more VCs, angels and incubators. Perhaps things have changed for the worse.
I'm perfectly ok letting down professional investors. And also the people I hired. And the users. And myself. That's the game; sometimes you lose.
But that doesn't mean I won't regret it when it happens. Or tell those people I'm sorry it didn't work. Or work hard to avert that outcome. That's also part of the game. At least that's the game I want to play.
I have no idea why that's controversial here.
It's those people who are suicidal in failed startup scenarios.