I might be naive, but I don't see having to choose self-employment or salaried work as a all-or-nothing, no-going-back decision. You could easily secure a well

I might be naive, but I don't see having to choose self-employment or salaried work as a all-or-nothing, no-going-back decision. You could easily secure a well paid job for a few years, and save enough to support working on a start-up or starting a consulting business. If things do not go as planned, I can see no problems in going back to being employed, since your skills won´t have withered in the meantime, and possibily learned new ones. It seems to me that the startup culture is seen sometimes as a "get rich quick" scheme, where the goal is to retire at 25. A normal career in most professions lasts 30/40 years...