Well, conservative&#x27;s a hard call. It&#x27;s not so conservative that startups or new businesses are impossible, and it&#x27;s not like everyone you encounter socially will look befuddled at you if you claim to be working for yourself. It&#x27;s still the US here, and not some culture completely unfamiliar with the entire concept of working for yourself.<p>It&#x27;s just that if you ask anyone around here &quot;Would you like $5 million now, or a chance at an unknown percentage of somewhere between $5 billion and $0 in 10 years?&quot;, even the entrepreneurial types are going to take that first one most of the time.<p>Interesting thought: $5million is totally &quot;f you&quot; money around here in the Midwest; that&#x27;s retire instantly for a fairly nice lifestyle, plus a quite healthy buffer. In Silicon Valley, that&#x27;s still nothing to sneeze at, but it&#x27;ll certainly seem like a lot less; a lot more people for your monkey brain to see around you that are still richer, a lot of single houses that can soak up that entire fortune and more, etc. You could retire instantly, but you&#x27;ll have a lot more pulling you away. I wonder if that has any influence in the results?<p>And of course there&#x27;s also the fact that anyone who won&#x27;t settle for anything less than the % at billions above will move to Silicon Valley. There&#x27;s a lot of places in the world where you can make a successful startup, sometimes HN even has articles pointing that out, but there&#x27;s not very many places you can get the rocket-powered VC capital to either grow a unicorn horn or die trying.