This. When founders bemoan the "talent crisis", they are really complaining about the shortage of people who are excellent coders/marketeers/whatever but have n

This. When founders bemoan the "talent crisis", they are really complaining about the shortage of people who are excellent coders/marketeers/whatever but have naively optimistic expectations of what their equity will be worth. It normally only takes one startup job for people to fall out of that Venn intersection. There's a third option if you can code and want to be involved in/profit from the startup scene: contract for big day rates somewhere like NYC or London, and angel invest your spare cash and tech mentor a basket of N startups. You will probably make better picks (and give saner advice) than most VCs.