I also think the 90% figure is misleading - but I think it's too optimistic. The number of people that quit their job and use their savings and/or family-friend

I also think the 90% figure is misleading - but I think it's too optimistic. The number of people that quit their job and use their savings and/or family-friends-fools money to start working on a startup and never get to a point where anyone knows they even exist is huge. These people are never counted in any of the official statistics, and don't talk much about their venture because it's never nice to talk about your failures. If you include this very large shadow group I'd argue that less than 10% even make it to ramen profitability. You never hear about the failures - only the successes. This skews the picture.