There's the famous case of the FedEx guy who told his staff he could pay for fuel for the planes or pay their wages. He then went to Vegas and gambled the money to keep the business going. That's how we got FedEx. Irresponsibility and recklessness.

It's not an isolated story. For every successful business that doesn't something insane and wins there are 10 that fail. We never heard about all the other shipping startups that failed and whose employees went home with empty paychecks. We praise this fucked up psychopathic level of risk taking, and then we end up with companies and cut throat and toxic as Uber.

Because they're convinced a merger is right around the corner?? I'd agree if you said they were convinced a big accounts receivable was sending a cheque, but counting on a merger to pay all your debt to contributors is naive at best.

Ha, no it's worse for a startup, because you take on obligations hoping that you'll make a big sale of your new thing to a market that hasn't heard about you, has no reason to trust you, and no current intention of sending you any money at all, ever.