Yes, but some of that is also about how speculative your ambitions are. Lots of small companies start with relatively conservative models that are designed to "click" almost immediately. That's not a fashionable model among SOMA startups, though.

Which is to say that there are some impediments to feeling much sympathy about the unfairness of it all when people in the SOMA startup orbit talk about how they don't have the luxury to get home for dinner with their kids, because they're metaphorically trying to keep both feet on the gas pedal. Well, they chose to do that; not only that, but statistically, they're probably going to fail like the rest of new businesses. There's no valid imperative that demands that they make that choice.

Mark Cuban's BROADCAST.COM seems like a great example of the "speculatively ambitious" model.