I've seen that happen so many times, and it sucks. I'm sorry you went through that experience. :( My first job was at a startup that crashed and burned, and wh

I've seen that happen so many times, and it sucks. I'm sorry you went through that experience. :( My first job was at a startup that crashed and burned, and what I took from that experience was that the only financially responsible way to work with startups as an engineer is to work on a lot of them to spread out the risk, or be a founder. There's just no other way unless you're comfortable with a ton of risk. Like I said in my post above, this "success" didn't come overnight; I spent many years grinding with the business development, upping my development skills, and putting myself out there. It was not easy.