Obviously speaking from my own experience, but this hits the nail on the head. The things I learned at startups were parlayed into jobs at the bigger companies later in life.
Also, on the original topic. I've been a part of three startups. One with trivial equity, one with options worth about 0.1% of the company, and finally one with options worth 1% of the company.
The second company is still going and is a lifestyle business, so those options were basically worthless since the owner may not sell for many, many years. The first and third companies were acquired, but at values that made the options worthless, so I got a long term capital loss for the first company and nothing for the third.
For the third, I was an executive, so I got a stock/cash package from the acquiring company for (very) low seven figures, but the stock itself was worth nothing.
So, I'm 3 for 3 on "successful" startups, but 0 for 3 on actually cashing in on any equity.
- Was it basically an acqui-hire?
- How much was it sold for?
- How much was raised totally?
- How much was the cumulative compensation package above the stock price given to key employees such as yourself?
Thanks
"I took the one [road] less travelled by, and that has made all the difference" ;-) It doesn't matter which way you go, years from now you'll end up thinking the decision was an important one.
I can't speak for Facebook, Google, but I did work at Amazon for about 5 years (and take this with a grain of salt because this was 2003 through 2008 on the ops side (supply chain specifically)). And you learn the Amazon way of building software. You use Amazon tools, frameworks, and style. And while some of that knowledge is definitely applicable to other jobs I've held, most of it is not. It is a little bit more now because of AWS (similarity between internal tools and AWS offerings).
So yeah...with Option B you might not hit the lottery. But the skills I learned from multiple attempts at Option B are more applicable in my opinion. And that's worth something.