Workers in the valley have been making real money in the startup lottery (not fabulous wealth but real money in the retire-by-50 sense) since Intel and HP were

Workers in the valley have been making real money in the startup lottery (not fabulous wealth but real money in the retire-by-50 sense) since Intel and HP were formed in the very early 1970s; let alone Microsoft, Sun, SGI and others in the early 80s. By the mid-80s it wasn't rare at all (Cisco, for one of many).