> If they don’t come out of it with lots of after-tax cash, then that calls into question why to even work at one. When joining any early startup, you really w

> If they don’t come out of it with lots of after-tax cash, then that calls into question why to even work at one. When joining any early startup, you really want to be able to do an early exercise of your options immediately when you join. If this is not possible for whatever reason, I consider it too risky to join. When joining a startup one already knows it can fail the traditional way (bankrupcy), so that's the risk we take. But getting stuck in the position of having hit it big on paper but you can never leave the company because there is no liquidity, or having them expire.. just too painful.