But IPOs are essentially zero too. If I took a sample of 100 startup employees, the number who have made any significant money in an IPO is way below 1. The f

But IPOs are essentially zero too. If I took a sample of 100 startup employees, the number who have made any significant money in an IPO is way below 1. The fact that the fraction of a person made a really huge amount of money doesn't matter if we are talking about the decision making process of these 100 people. I'm just saying the whole thing is very arbitrary in acquisition, IPO, or whatever. I agree that you should know how many shares are out there, if you think you are getting 1% and you are getting 0.1%, that is a big difference. But if one startup is offering you 0.8% and another is offering you 0.1%, how the hell do you know which is a better offer? You don't. Salary is very comparable and money is practically useful. Worry about that. Maybe you can estimate if something has a big enough market that it could IPO, do that. But you can't predict success. Look how bad investors are at it.