Umm, I will have to disagree that an early employee status is a guarantee to making millions. First of all i havent heard of that many early employees getting a

Umm, I will have to disagree that an early employee status is a guarantee to making millions. First of all i havent heard of that many early employees getting anywhere close to 3%, most of the time its between 0.5% and 1.5% for a salary thats several tens of thousands below market. Secondly, if we are talking about companies that will get more funding, that means that your ownership of the company will be diluted further. So in laymans terms, if you get 1% of the company and that gets diluted to 0.66% after Series A/B/C funding, in order for you to reach your $1 million, the company would have to acquired for more than $150 million. And what are the chances of that? Furthermore, dont forget that while youre giving up some tens of thousands of dollars a year(that you might make at market), your equity stake is vested over 4 years, so if you do decide to leave after a year, you would have given up two years worth of potential market salaries for half of the equity that has potentially no value. So basically, its a gamble and hopefully people do their research before taking a leap into the startup world.