4 ms·
> one major thing that has changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not possible to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to retire wealthy" or "I can
by jjav 4y ago
> one major thing that has changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not possible to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to retire wealthy" or "I can now afford to seed my own startup wealthy") out of the equity package that a startup will offer unless you're the cofounders or a founding employee
Statistically that's likely, but it's not always the case.
If you luck into one of the companies that IPOs and grows big (and doesn't need to be FB/GOOG-level big, just in the handful of billions in market cap), even the tiny sliver of options of a regular employee can become retirement-level money.
There are many public companies in SV that have market cap in the dozens of billions who made their regular employees who joined pre-IPO very rich even though the companies aren't FAANG and don't have such brand recognition.
- matrix_overload 4y agoToss in dilution, liquidation preferences and other financial engineering put by the people who actually know the rules of the game, and your "tiny sliver of options" will still be worth less than 5 years of FAANG salary.
- jjav 4y agoNo, not always. Having been in SV over 20 years, I know plenty of people who've scored very comfortable retirement money out of IPOs despite having joined late as regular ICs. And a handful who became insanely rich even though none were founders or single-digit early employees. It's unlikely, yes. But it happens.