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There's more to it than the small chance of winning the equity lottery. Working for a startup confers a number of non-monetary benefits that mega-corps don't. I

There's more to it than the small chance of winning the equity lottery. Working for a startup confers a number of non-monetary benefits that mega-corps don't. If you pay a startup-salary and then stick people in a cubicle and have them write TPS reports and deal with petty politics (ie: mega-corp conditions), people won't work for you. The feeling of working for a company that will make a dent in the world, so to speak, and that your effort will have tangibly supported creation of said dent is a powerful motivator.

agentultra 9y ago
The odds of "making a dent in the world" are pathetically, abysmally, absurdly small. You cannot plan for that. It just happens to some people and that's it. If by, so to speak, you mean that some dents are bigger than others -- sure... contributing to a small startup that makes some people a decent amount of money and the rest practically nothing... sounds great. Turns out the bigger the exit the less the rest of the people make and the more a small group of people do. Of all the companies big and small that are started around the globe each day, how many have "made a dent in the world?" It may as well be zero. If you cannot be motivated internally you're not going to find it very satisfying to continue taking risks working for (or starting) startups. When the first one fails, and the next few, and you never end up making that dent... you're going to be very disappointed. You can use that same internal motivation at a big-corp as you can working for a start up. Or anywhere else in life.