The current way of doing things self-selects for types willing to put in crazy hours and with access to money.
> If you have a family, a few kids and maybe parents that rely on your financial support, a single dry month without income may spell disaster.
Sounds like you are asking for all companies to be stable and reliable sources of income. That wouldn't make any sense.
I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying. I'm working at a non-SV start up, and we've made many efforts to create a "normal" work environment: paying everyone at least enough to stay alive and out of debt, leaving at 5 and trying to reduce the ammount of extra-time people have to put in...
But we also realize the ways in which this is limits us, and I totally understand that when someone needs a breakthrough innovation or to fix a very hard problem, extraordinary sacrifices may have to be made. I know other startups working in the more SV/crunch style and honestly it probably makes sense for them.
Being willing to go this far for what you believe (or may be for the money you expect to make) has value.
Being able to go this far of course is very dependent on your lot in life (which is something we should work against, with a social safety net that enables people from all wealth levels), and also on the decisions you made before (like having kids; which I don't know we can be doing all that much about).
(I hope I made any sense, mondays are bad for my english-writing skills.)
Is there a realistic alternative? Sure, universal basic income eventually, but that's not practical at the moment.
I read a lot on entrepreneurship during 19th century and early 20th century US. My limited understanding: in those days entrepreneurs came from much wider range of demographics. In other words, entry barriers were much less during those days.
See: https://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-sa...
You do hear horror stories (like that indie developer who quit his day job to make a game and went broke), but that has more to do with little to no planning for plan B.
I basically couldn't make it work for various reasons related to being married and needing to have some health insurance that costs over $1.1k / mo. Meanwhile, if my spouse has the privilege of a job with decent health insurance, the expense plummets to $400 / mo which makes a huge difference.
The more realistic route for most people is to work part-time on your projects perhaps taking years longer than if you were to have quit and worked full-time and to quit your job when one of them pans out to being viable. This approach tends to work substantially better for non-business ventures like writing, performance art, etc. Look at all the middle-class / lower income writers that worked awful jobs for years to make ends meet but kept writing. Most of them had 9-to-5 jobs but for a lot of software jobs that pay into the six figure range, they are far, far more demanding of you mentally than waiting tables (although physical exhaustion absolutely affects mental ability, too). This level of work, however, is probably what it takes to be an entrepreneur without much means given that even those with means oftentimes have to work so much for even a small chance at a business opportunity.
Not always true.
Missed salaries (and therefore savings) early in life translate to massive losses later when you take into account lost compound interest over 30+ years.
The other thing is that working insane hours to get a startup off the ground can cause depression, burnout, a host of health problems, etc. Some people never recover from these regardless of their credentials or any additional opportunities they come across.
For all the talk of risking everything, most founders risk time and foregone salary, but not their future. If microsoft had failed, Bill Gates would have re-enrolled at Harvard and graduated a little late.
Your average Joe or Jane that dreams of owning a coffee shop and has to put up their own capital is another story.