One of the top comments on the YouTube video attached to the article talks about how someone wasted their 20s working as the founding engineer (employee #6 of a 6-person startup) and when the company exited for $100 MM, they only got 100k and are still working at 40 years of age while the other 5, presumably having cofounder-level equity, are retired. This is the true risk of startups, and, if you're looking to maxim…
One thing people need to remember is the world runs on incentives. And on this topic, there is a HUGE incentive to mislead people. The facts are: 1) Tech startups usually need a bunch of good engineers 2) Investors and founders want these engineers for as little money as possible, as almost every owner-labor relationship in history has gone 3) Stock options have mystique from once-in-a-lifetime companies like Google…
Basically, VCs optimize for many small bets, ie investing in many, many companies where only one needs to hit it big in order to recoup the investment cost, while startups focus only on their own success, so it's in the VCs' best interest to sell the dream of working on or at a startup, thereby increasing VCs' own success without necessarily materially affecting the success of the startup itself.