the small percentage of survivors will lay it out like there's specific sequence of steps but its 1) very tough to find market product fit 2) even if you do, theres no guarantee you will be chosen 3) your immediate circle, your economic class, education, race impact your perceived social credit 4) luck (even all three are met but some still do not "make it"
It's pretty foolhardy to tell people to go out and gamble and brush off survivorship with vanity. Back to the original parent's comment, they could've easily taken that Google job and continue development of their side project which didn't raise any money and grew organically, anyways.
I think that there is a much deeper track to entrepreneurship than the false, oversimplified binary of
1) either do a side project purely in the spare time of one's bigco job and surviving
2) go full-time into a company whether one may fail (and ultimately starve) or not
Not everyone is (or should) become a professional social media influencer.
Not everyone is (or should) become a professional musician.
Not everyone is (or should) become a professional basketball player.
Not everyone is (or should) become a professional politician.
Not everyone is (or should) become a professional founder.
But plenty of people do.
What you're talking about as being "so risky" can really be as mundane as becoming a competent mid level manager at a large tech company. One do have to make certain moves in one's career to prepare for management, and there's a certain level of progressive, targeted professional maturation that has to take place before one can be put in charge of others in some kind of a management capacity and not mess the whole thing up completely. But it's ultimately something which can be (and commonly is) trained for. Moreover, it is something most people can accomplish in their lifetime with training -- not that it means it's something most people should do or would enjoy doing.
It can take 6-10 years of practicing how to find and get into the top 1-10% startups to get any good at it. Or to get the skills one would need to run one. Or to find the right colleagues to build a network of peers and mentors one likes.
But if someone puts the full time in and don't get even decent (never mind best in class) results, they probably need to be more patient, and/or they screwed something very specific up, which they could probably fix; it's not because they aren't capable of it.
So it may require a different much more personal playbook than one may be used to, and if one has not fully developed theirs yet, it may seem delusional or unattainable. But much of that, if that's in the case, would be in their head. It would be like saying "I can't be a manager." That's probably not the case. What is likely more the case is "I like being an IC more than a manager" and "I prefer the working environment of established big companies over small startups."
People tend to prefer what they're good at, and they tend to be good at what they prefer. I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's pretty foolhardy to tell people to go out and gamble and brush off survivorship with vanity. Back to the original parent's comment, they could've easily taken that Google job and continue development of their side project which didn't raise any money and grew organically, anyways.