Doesn't everybody sacrifice their youth though? I'm trying to think of what my friends are doing that's more interesting than a startup, and I can't really think of anything. Grad school. Law school. A second bachelor's, because the first was in something unemployable. Unemployment. Living at home with parents and working at a coffee shop, or as a dog-walker. Spending 5 full days/week working for a big corporation, with the commute not allowing any extra time during the day - well, at least they get weekends.

I can really only think of a couple people doing interesting stuff. One spent 6 months on a boat in an Alaska working as a salmon fisher. Another is on a boat in the South Pacific as part of a grad program in geology in Chile. A third is in the Peace Corps. All of those have downsides (eg. salmon fishing is incredibly physically demanding and stinks, literally, and the girl in the Peace Corps gets sexually harassed wherever she goes). And in all cases, it's at the cost of not being able to build up any savings at all.