I was an early employee (<100) in a scale up. Late in my first year I “took one for the team” after some typical startup personnel drama, and was offered equity

I was an early employee (<100) in a scale up. Late in my first year I “took one for the team” after some typical startup personnel drama, and was offered equity for keeping the ship steady. Fast forward past an IPO lockup: Love my job. Team is great. Get on fine with the board, work pretty closely at times with almost all of them. What I’m surprised at was/is the difficulty of choosing how to invest the lucky windfall capital (I diversified out as soon as I could, heard enough horror stories about not doing it), I think that it’s harder than if I’d been independently wealthy - far less room for error, fewer options and far less support from private bankers and the broader financial industry which helps people with an excess of capital. It’s going fairly well now after some time, but there was a lot more cognitive load than expected. For me, I am facing a rebalancing of personal goals - they’ve come second to my work, and the health costs of that have been more clear over time. At work this means I want to achieve more impact in less hours (why didn’t I think of that before?), delegate more effectively (see above), and do things with more strategic impact (which also happen to be more fun). All of these things were in my power to do before. I’m not even sure it was the “ramen rich” thing that made the difference than having external validation during discussions with bankers and investors during the pre-IPO phase. It’s also become clear how much the business values my work, as I’ve been navigating these changes (from “not much” all the way to “a lot” ha ha). With a lot of social capital it’s working out. I guess that some colleagues were big shareholders. Some left fairly early on to fulfil dreams, some hung on until irritations built up enough to force a departure. Two years later, I miss nearly all of them a lot, they were my “seniors” and direct peers, replaced by talented but less battle-hardened individuals who - mostly - only have the successful pre-IPO phase as reference. Newer, driven, engaged, staff do ask relevant questions about reward for their level of commitment which cannot be answered except in platitudes. There are more smart, enthusiastic 9-5 types who want to be part of a success rather than build a success. These people are my challenge - motivations and communication styles (meetings! goddamn meetings!) have to be different, and leadership tactics that worked need serious adjustments in the years to come.