I agree with you that some people probably overestimate those two things. But I also think that other people tend to lump all startups together with the assump

I agree with you that some people probably overestimate those two things. But I also think that other people tend to lump all startups together with the assumption that the risk is more or less the same across all of them. In reality risk/reward ratio certainly varies by at least 10x across opportunities. Consider the difference between a seed stage company with no users and a product that doesn't even work yet vs a Series B company with significant traction and 10s of millions in the bank. These can be hugely different situations. But, even if you ignore this, I come back to the concept of risk tolerance. No matter what #s you choose, there are certainly people out there who by dint of personality, age, or financial situation are perfectly willing to take on a lot of risk.