The three things I value in doing a startup rather than working for e.g. Microsoft or Google are, in no particular order: 1) Freedom to work on what I want, ho

The three things I value in doing a startup rather than working for e.g. Microsoft or Google are, in no particular order: 1) Freedom to work on what I want, how I want. Would Google let me use CoffeeScript? I doubt it. 2) Variety - I get to touch all aspects of the business (business decisions, software-related stuff, customers, management) and also get to touch all aspects of the software cycle (spec, design, implementation/testing, deployment/server administration). I'm learning way more general, transferable skills than I would at Microsoft. 3) Potentially, lots of money. As you say, I don't want money for its own sake...I want it so that I can assign relatively higher priority to how interesting my next job is versus how well it pays, and to support my eventual family.