No, it's not quite that simple, which is exactly the point of the article. If I own 1% of a company that raises a round at a $2B valuation, my shares are worth

No, it's not quite that simple, which is exactly the point of the article. If I own 1% of a company that raises a round at a $2B valuation, my shares are worth $20M, in theory. But does that mean I can sell my shares for $20M? No, it does not. Even if I can find a buyer for them, they won't fetch the same price that the latest investors paid, because of the liquidation preference. (If they do, either I've found a sucker, or the company got suckered in the latest round.) If I can't sell my shares for $20M, then they aren't really worth that much. Twenty million is a convenient estimate, but there's a reason we sometimes talk about people being rich "on paper."