I have to say I strongly agree with this. The personal risks I am taking to start a company, are a little crazy, and I've had no shortage of people telling me so. And I know so many people who are waiting for their life to be settled and stable before they begin. This is one of the main social influences repressing our potential founders.
Risk is generally proportional to reward. If it was less risky to start a startup, the reward or chance of reward wouldn't be as great (more people doing it, less chance of succeeding or of an exit).
But this isn't axiomatic. Risk isn't always proportional to reward. Sometimes risk is just pointless risk. Risk can be just one of many factors in how valuable something might be to the world.
Furthermore, wealth isn't a zero sum game. It's possible that there's some limit to the number of conceivable successful companies in the social networking sphere, but there are a billion other things worth working on. As PG has pointed out, health alone is an like an infinite want.
Well, I should have said risk is correlated to reward. While wealth might not be a zero sum game, if 5x the number of startups existed that exist now, it would just be harder to be successful on average. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's different than what is out there and probably a worse scenario for everybody that is willing to take the amount of risk required today.
I'm not so sure. In many respects it's been easier for us (in these first few months) because of startup culture, which might not exist if we were five times fewer.
