Resist the urge to hire a fancy money manager or do anything different beyond a celebratory dinner with your family.
Don’t tell anyone beyond your wife and very trustworthy family about this. Otherwise,you will quickly have lots of “friends” and family members who “love” you.
Going forward with work is a personal decision. Obviously, you don’t need to. A tried-and-true conservative investment approach will pay you sufficient income for the rest of your life (and our kids through college, and everything else). But it’s tough to stop working. Anecdotally, I’m about half retired (on a lot less money) and it’s a big challenge.
I’m getting long winded. For now, resist the urge to do anything special, anything too different.
I completely agree with this if he had won the lottery. Money found is different than money earned. In this situation though, the OP picked the right startup, put work and effort into making it successful, and was financially compensated for the risk and effort he took. I would say he should own his success; the money is rightfully his.
Yeah, because it takes a TEAM of people getting paid to figure out what to do with money. I could accept one financial advisor though I don't know how to select one, but a team sounds a bit like vultures ;-)
An adviser that is not operating under the duty, can place their best interests above yours legally (and this is expected).
According to this article[1], you need $8.4 million to be in the top 1% of net worth so 1 out of 100 HN lurkers can probably also give useful first hand advice!
(assuming being rich doesn't make you less likely to visit HN)
[1] https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-...
https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-top-one-percent-net-wor...
https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats_the_... is a pretty famous series of comments.
"Do nothing rash. Set aside one year's living expenses[note 2] and place the rest of the windfall into low risk investments (FDIC insured accounts, money market funds, treasury bills) for one year. As it may take as long as five years for the windfall recipient to adjust to a new life, this pause provides a chance for emotions to cool, helps avoid impulsive behavior, and, if warranted, allows the recipient time to put together a team of professional advisers."