As someone who has worked at many startups in India, here are my 2 cents. You chose to work at a startup not in the hope of a glorious exit via some acquisition

As someone who has worked at many startups in India, here are my 2 cents. You chose to work at a startup not in the hope of a glorious exit via some acquisition or an IPO. You work at a startup because you want to surround yourself by really smart people. When making generalizations, while it is certain that most startups will fail, it is also quite likely that most of your startup coworkers will eventually succeed and go to great places, and when they do, they will take you along if you were any good in the first place. Because one thing that almost guarantees failure is not trying, and you would find a lot of 'not trying, complacent with my good job' people not at the startups, but at the large or middle sized companies past their prime, running on the momentum they picked earlier. This is what I tell people when I hire them, and believe me, a lot more people are getting this now than a decade ago, when startups were associated with unexpected riches and easy money. That's a lot of hope.