An interesting article, but the title left me with a question that the article completely failed to answer: what about the lesson "don't spend your family's life savings on your startup"?
Losing all of your $20k savings at age 25, DINK family: hurts, but not life-changing in any way (as long as your spouse is OK with it, and you'd better be damn sure they aren't lying to you when if they say it's OK)
Losing all of you $200k savings at age 35, two small children and stay-at-home spouse: extraordinarily painful and will impact every decision you make for a long time.
If they are telling the truth, win.
If they are lying, it's best to find out now. Better your spouse gets 50% of a failed startup now and alimony based on your nonexistent income than 50% of your cash later.
When you're out of college, you're used to living on a shoestring budget. You can get by without quite little because you haven't really raised your standards of living around a big salary.
When you've worked for a few years, you've likely saved up a decent amount of cash (unless you live a life filled with consumption). You may have to cut back on all the perks but you can still get by.
Most of the people I know who want to start a company don't want to risk their current cash flow. Yet all of them have been working long enough where they've likely saved up enough money to go a long time without making money and be ok. I think the only thing is that people raise their standards of living (more expensive rent, big car payments, high rent/mortgage) such that they feel they must continue to make their current salary in order to "survive."