koolherc

It seems pretty common that first employees of a startup get ~1% of equity in the new company. That 1% is easily diluted to ~0.5% after a few funding rounds, and even if the startup has an exit of 100m (within an optimistic 3-4 years), those first employees get ~500k, before taxes, and probably not all-cash. An even bigger exit is highly unlikely, but let's say 5%.

So my math says that a quite optimistic return is ~125-175k/year in 3-4 years (+ startup salary), for a 100m exit.

Assuming that really good engineers can get a senior/staff job at Google or other large corp, they can easily(?) get an offer that's 250-300k per year and that is guaranteed.

Working probably crazy hours for a startup, having more responsibility, and having only <5% chance of a financial win vs large corp doesn't really make sense to me, or at least doesn't seem rational.

So my question to first employees is what was the reason behind your decision? Is it only the small-company startup culture that's much more appealing, or is my math wrong?

disclaimer: I'm working as a first engineer in a European country, where salaries are nowhere close to the Bay Area salaries, but startup returns could be similar, probably chances are thinner. Also I'm well above 1% in the startup.