These threads are always so binary in their world view. Everything is either striking it lucky and being a multimillionaire by the time a person is twenty-five or they missed out on luck and they're permanently homeless and drug addicted.
Like work ethic has nothing to do with it. They completely ignore that fact that there is a set of life choices that limits the downside, slowly builds the upside, and allows a person to create opportunities.
A high reward for low risk is a good strategy, especially if you know you lack some essential skill like epic motivation.
Most startups fail: they are NOT a sensible financial investment as an individual. Your poker stack is your time and the opportunity cost of a normal job. Your reward is too variable to be a sensible risk to take.
A common statistic is one success per 10 VC investment. But a VC turns down 100 startups for every one they fund, so your individual chances of success are much lower than that.
If a person only does startups then they have a very significant chance of getting $0 in return.
The kelly criterion[1] for 100x return (say 100MM after 10 years work == 5th of working life and opportunity cost of $1MM wages) and 1 in 20 chance of success (a large overestimate) says you should invest 1/25th of your pot.
For that to be sensible as an individual you could:
A. hugely reduce time invested (hard if you want outsized returns),
B. lower risk i.e. don’t take all-or-nothing VC money,
C. pool your risk with other startups (now you are a VC - hard)
D. already have millions (so 1/25th is big enough)
E. live forever (infinite dice rolls).
F. value the social outcomes of being a founder very highly (I think this is common)
G. Have some inside knowledge that changes the risks (large risk you are kidding yourself - reality shows that).
I seriously think being a founder is not a sensible financial decision, and I think it is very smart not to be a founder.
They could have done _something_ with all that spare time but they rather vegged out and whiled away their time.