I thought the key point was this: Before you close on any round, you should create a waterfall spreadsheet that shows what you and each other stakeholde

I thought the key point was this: Before you close on any round, you should create a waterfall spreadsheet that shows what you and each other stakeholder would get in a range of exits – low, medium and high. What you will generally find is that, in high, everyone is happy. In low, no one is happy, and in medium (which is where most deals settle) you can either be penniless or "life-changingly" compensated, depending on how much money you raised and what terms you agreed to. It is simply foolish to sell part of the company you founded without understanding this fully. Given the most likely outcome conditional on that outcome being positive is a modest success, you should negotiate terms to optimize for that and assume that if you build the next dropbox, everyone will be so rich it will all work itself out. But yeah, if you blow $200mm without building an enormous business how on earth do you justify getting paid?