On the other hand, if you come from a rather poor background and have no one to fall back on, finding yourself with a failed company, in debt, maybe kicked out of your place because you can't pay rent, I'd say that rather terrifying.

I'm all for entrepreneurship, but if failing means living in the street, then let's just not start a company for now.

There are two types of businesses out there. Those that make money from day 1 and simply need to be scaled up. Those that require substantial investment and time before you even make a penny.

For anyone who isn't financially secure, doing the latter is idiotic. There are plenty of business models that you can pursue that don't involve you ending up on the street. A business model where the worst-case scenario is that you wasted some time.

Gee here we are again talking about the parents. Why not just ask your parents for a million dollar business loan while you're at it Mitt Romney?

I have spoken to a friend who has rich parents, and the psychological effect is that they always know if something goes wrong they can just be supported by their rich parents when they get back on their feet.

Furthermore they know they can bum around until their parents die and get their retirement money in the form of inheritance. You might be surprised how ever-present that thought is to people like that.

But for people without that option, because their parents can't, they make the right decision and don't take a risk because there is nothing to fall back on.

I wish people wouldn't speak this confidently with such little life experience.

Or provide details about those experiences you think are needed.

Well, that's mostly an US issue, I guess. When you live in a country with even modest public healthcare, such as Germany, things are not that terrible.

Here, if you get ill, no matter how bad, you get the base treatment that you need. Of course you can (and should) pay on top of that for better treatment. But event without money, you don't have to fear to be denied important treatments. (With some unfortunate, but luckily very rare exceptions.)

Thinking of that, I wonder why we Germans are so conservative, despite living relatively secure. A large portion of our people could take a lot of risk without falling too deep. Probably this is because "falling deep" here means to have to rely on social welfare provision, of which people are afraid of. But this is not really falling deep, compared to living on the street in utter poverty.

(hat tip to Algolia's HN search ;) )

The further you deviate from that (not fluent in the right language, from the wrong minority/gender, self-taught, etc.) the more reasonable it is to question how a failure will impact your ability to get jobs at your level or even stay in the field.