Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new company now were I'm an executive and get to do a lot of cool stuff.
I often debate on going back to start company six, and many saturdays my circle of friends hold "startup circle" where we pitch ideas and push a couple small projects forward and debate on quitting our real jobs and going back to building another company.
I would say the best realization of this article is that entrepreneur is a state of mind. A willingness to create from nothing in the face of extreem adversity. I have been a developer for close to 30 years now also and it's very much like that first couple of hours when you stare at the blank screen thinking about the 100,000's of lines of code needed to build whatever system it is you're about to build. Except it's more addicting then that because the scale is so much larger and your "vision" collides with "reality" and becomes something you can influence but often you end up along for the ride.
I personally would bet it's the same reason professional bull rider's ride bulls. Most of us look at them like they're insane but they have this zen approach to managing risk and the randomness of the bull trying to kill them. And when they beat the other guy the "high" must be quite insane.
Entrepreneurs suffer from the same sort of bold blindness. I have spoken with many people over the years who ask me "how can you do that, how do you get out of bed every day and just push forward" and I tell them I just like the challenge. To them they see me risking my family, my house, my car and my career to do something that scares them to death. To me I see the opportunity to express something that burns in the core of my soul and make something from nothing on a scale that should scare me but really just excites me!
I think the saying "40 years of work in 4 years" is a bit unfair, the reality is if you love what you do and are passionate about it you can work like this in a company that already exists or a mid-term C round start-up and have a lot of fun and potentially be well rewarded. That part is just the workaholic that might give an entrepreneur slight edge and a chance to ride the bull just a bit longer then the next guy.