You bring up the point of “spare-time” and to me, this is key to the argument. What about a somewhat slower moving Y Combinator type organization that operates more like night school or weekend school? Or even an org with some people on staff and founders that come and go between their day jobs to work with staff developers, etc. Obviously the org would take a larger cut for this but still…

There's no doubt there has to be sacrifice, it's just a matter of what type of sacrifice is reasonable to take at specific stages in life.

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/impact-ventures-a...

Although one was just launched this summer through Extreme Venture Partners called Extreme University.

I think I'll write a new post which maps out the types of support a young/recent-grad type entrepreneur needs vs. an older, working stiff. There will be some similarities of course but many differences.

I think once you get to this point and still want to launch some sort of venture, the best course of action is to fund it yourself with your wage-work and carve time out of your personal life, on top of your existing job. It's brutally hard, especially when you start to add kids to the mix. The benefit of doing it this way is that you have an almost unlimited runway to launch from, as long as you can afford the personal time to spend on the project. There is no crash n' burn scenario as there would be with a limited amount of startup funding and the timeframe that implies.