Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a private transaction, so it's unknown and unless it's leaked out we are unlikely to ever know. There was a startup I was co-founder of at one point, and seven years later (about the same age as Paperspace) we sold for a similar amount, and the net of my shares was a little over $100,000. The CEO got more, other early joiners less. And among my direct knowledge of individuals in the startup community, this is no…
If you want to share some more (approximate) numbers, I'm very curious. What equity percentage did you have at the start? And were your shares worth more at an earlier investment round than at the exit?
According to a lawyer who setup our initial investments, this was actually illegal so common investors including myself sued, but was this bankrolled by one of the big early investors as it's incredibly expensive to try and do a shareholder lawsuit against a major VC firm and investment bank. It ended up being settled out of court and that's where my $100,000 came from. The CEO came out a little better, but people who sweated years (and I mean frequent all nighters, weekends, true dedication) ended up with even less than me. And the only reason we even received anything at all was because we had a HNWI common investor who also got screwed and backed the lawsuit, they ended up getting their money back and a small return on investment from what I remember of the settlement terms.
Just a word of caution to founders and early employees of startups to know what they are getting in to and the typical case of what happens (a small or non existent exit is the typical case in a tech startup), even when you see those big number raises and a big sale and you just assume that everyone is making bank.