I've never personally heard someone make an absolute number statement like "$5 million", but back during the first dot-com boom and bust I certainly saw manager

I've never personally heard someone make an absolute number statement like "$5 million", but back during the first dot-com boom and bust I certainly saw managers at startups imply untold millions, even to people who held relatively small amounts of common stock. Suffice it to say, those millions were generally fictional, even among companies lucky enough to have big exits before the bubble popped (generally, due to massive dilution of the common stock pool).