For some more anecdata, I just had another potential new client call in to my co-op wanting to spec out an MVP that they can farm around to investors to get seed funding. He said him and his partners are keeping their day jobs for now. These kinds of projects in my experience usually cost 5-20k USD of self funded money, so of course not nothing, but well within the range of a couple working professionals pooling their money.

If they can't get funding off the MVP then yes they're 20k in the hole, but at least they were working in the meantime.