Have you worked for a startup and become a millionaire because of your stock or options? Comparing this to working at a public company. For example, at our company or many others, we are sitting on $3-4m vested plus unvested stock because of ESPP and RSUs. And if you have already worked for top public companies, you may already have hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on your tenure. So can startup engineers get richer than this? Not talking about founders but just engineers. Say, even a startup takes a $1B exit or IPO. Initial engineers may not even have 0.1%. Then, effectively you are getting around $1m or so in four years or more timeframe. So what's the point of joining a startup from a money perspective? The challenge and fun are different stories, I'm not getting into. #startup
I know folks who were one of the first employees at the company I worked for make 10 mil or so. But they worked their bottoms off for 10 years. The company valuation at exit was less than 2B. These folks were in their late 30s when they joined.
Be a cofounder; Success rate is low but if you actually make it then you don’t need to be dependent on W2.
Startup is fine but you need to pivot fast if you don't see potential. I've seen many engineers (and founders) waste 3-5 years at startups that went nowhere. I think if a company is going to be successful, it's usually obvious at the end of year 1. Even if the product needs longer to evolve, it's obvious whether the team works.
I can see up to 10million in lucky cases.
Airbnb and DoorDash employees made a big killing if they joined a few years pre iPO
Most of the reason why ppl want to join startups these days is because they see Snowflake success. But the reason why Snowflake ppl got rich is because the company had a huge pop after IPOing. If they IPOed and remained at the valuation they raised their last VC round at, then really only early employees will benefit
NVIDIA is a bit of an outlier though. some startups will hit, some won't. just like public companies. at least with public companies you get SOMETHING, startups are more likely than not to go to zero
In case it doesn't go to zero, even then, do you really have real benefits or chance of becoming millionaire? Even if you get a Billion dollar exit, how much could you make?
if you're a fairly early employee and the company eventually goes for a B I'd guess after taxes you'd make a million or so factoring in dilution. multiplies from there, doordashs first employee made 40m or something you're basically asking what the chances are a company goes public, or gets acquired, which is not great on average. so to your point yes it's generally not the best call if you're trying to get rich. counterpoint though, I'm sitting on millions in Databricks RSUs 🤷🏼♂️
I was a co-founder of a small startup that exited for low 8 figures. My payout was between 1-2M due to my high equity position. I worked at it for 4 years. I probably slightly outearned what I would've done if I spent those 4 years at FAANG, but not by much. Unless you are a co-founder or have a high equity stake, working in big tech will almost always trump working at a startup in terms of TC due to low payout and low probability of success.
What was your equity percentage? More than 2% at least?
10%