Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Succeed or fail, you'll come out of it better off than you started." About half of the comments I read so far have said something to this effect so far, there's only so much a man can take before he needs to speak up ;) : this is bullshit. I know many (as in, 10+) people who started a company and got utterly fucked for the next decade, maybe two, because of its failure; and all they have to show for it is a period o…
> I know many (as in, 10+) people who started a company and got utterly fucked for the next decade, maybe two, because of its failure Really? That's odd. Sounds like they didn't know what they were doing. Did they by any chance spend a lot of money in a field they didn't know anything about and just hoped somehow it will magically work? Yea, if you're non-technical and you think you can build a product by hiring 10 d…
When you start for example a plumbing company or whatever and you buy 25k worth of tools and a lease contract on a van, and it fails and you need to take a job afterwards, on a employee plumber's salary that 25k is huge, enough to make your and your families life miserable.
I agree that for tech companies, the situation is usually not as precarious - if you have the skills to start a company like this, or even if you don't but almost do, you can get a fairly well-paying job and not be as affected. In those cases you would presumably get proper legal and accounting advise and shield personal money from the business liabilities but many businesses start as sole proprietorships and are very vulnerable to even small setbacks.