In the first .com boom I worked for a company that had a 60 million funding round. By the time I left I decided not to bother exercising my options for pennies a share. The company never went public. None of the many people I knew working for startups at the time saw a dime of profit from their options either.

The stock I got from the much larger, already public company I worked for next turned out to be worth a nice chunk of change though.