I was about to say the same thing, then I realized the point is that a 10% chance of $2.5M/year == $250k/year expected return, which IS lower than your expected

I was about to say the same thing, then I realized the point is that a 10% chance of $2.5M/year == $250k/year expected return, which IS lower than your expected return working for a BigCo (there’s a distribution of income depending on how you perform, there, too, but it’s much lower risk). This is a little bit disingenuous, because I’m pretty confident outside the 10% best case, there’s a pretty broad distribution where you work long hours and come away with SOME return, so I suspect the expected return may be close to even for passionate founders, albeit probably with more stress in the overall effort. Of course, the people starting companies usually aren’t guessing they have a 10% chance of success; you need to believe you’re an outlier to be successful in the startup game, it seems to me.