No it's not, it's a false equivalence. What the original commenter described has way more pathologies than "startups are hard", and it does not smell like success to me. To pick up on your analogy, it's more like a rock that has been drenched in poop by someone, and you're supposed to use it to cut your food. There are other sharp rocks around, and most of them are not covered by poop, so you might be able to cut your food with it without getting a terrible disease and puke all food out again in the process.