Yup. It's somewhat rare to find "top talent" at a startup, but more because many modern startups are stupid, existing only to suck from the VC teat. In my day

Yup. It's somewhat rare to find "top talent" at a startup, but more because many modern startups are stupid, existing only to suck from the VC teat. In my day... Be was a "startup" and Dominic and Andy were "top" talent. (and wasn't Dianne Hackborn at Be back then?) NeXT was a startup once and Avi Tevanian (despite my many, many technical disagreements) was an EXCELLENT engineer. RSADSI was a startup an Steve Dusse and Bob Baldwin were TOP talent. I think after the dot-com run-up, "startup" often implied "unprofitable idiot idea that looks plausible long enough to convince VCs to use your company as a demonstration of the greater fool theory." But I said "often," not "always." The critical and vexxing part of this is it's so hard to figure out which idiot ideas are profitable before the VCs shower a small cadre of Stanford GSB grads with cash.