I would take a pay cut if it meant working with a high talent concentration team that was small enough to be agile end to end in the full sales -> ops -> product/dev -> support cycle.

But that's a unicorn. You don't find a unicorn, you stumble upon it one day and miss the opportunity because you can't rationalize the fact that you actually saw a mythical creature.

It doesn’t have to be a unicorn. Maybe it’s incumbent on the rational participants in this community to figure out a way to do what you’re describing. New business models can be even more valuable inventions than new technologies. Perhaps VC has run its course for business and engineering ICs who don’t have preexisting wealth.

Big N isn't a startup. The risk to reward ratio between RSUs and first stage equity/options is very different. The environment is very different. Everything is different. I guess you could try to compare compensation between the two, but it's not a true comparison.

I worked for a startup that got funded in that ballpark. There were seven of us. We sat at a couple folding tables at an incubator for six months or so, and used a vacant space (no power, no heat) to build and test our hardware. We eventually moved into a bigger incubator with more office and lab space, then our own office.

We weren't in SF. Location matters less every day, and you have to make sure the higher costs associated with various locations make sense. It's pretty amazing where you can find a machine shop that can make prototypes for you if you need it. Cloud service providers will give startups $10k/mo or so in free time to start with to get you hooked, so you need very little infrastructure.

It is possible to run for a while without a huge initial round if you've already confirmed there's a market, have built relationships with potential customers, and have a team who understands what they're getting into, and is motivated to delivering the first few milestones, whatever they are.

Why does it need to be in the Bay Area? Or any expensive city for that matter? An EBITDA of $2.5mm in the Rust belt for instance is more than successful and would retain and satisfy top talent in the area.

Does the biggest compensation package even attract the best talent? Or does it just attract the obsessively competitive to burn out in style?

It might be easier to convince a VC to give you a few million for salaries than to find 10 world-class developers currently looking for a new job in a rust belt city.

I appreciate your comment, but I don’t really know where to start with it since it’s so far off the mark.

1. A start up would start with fewer people and less money. It would most likely be started by people who can live cheaply and/or people who have money from other sources like work or family. Founders typically don’t make anything early, but once the revenue starts rolling in, they can pay themselves and others.

2. Assuming you are referring to a business making 2.5mm, that’s plenty for a smaller team (e.g., 5). Not everyone will be a high-paid tech professional, and the founders will probably be the highest paid folks in sales and tech (at least in this structure). If you’ve got 2-3 founders growing a non-VC tech business making 2.5mm a year, and they can’t make it work, they’ve got big structural issues that they need to address.

3. Outside of the Bay Area or NYC, 10 people on 2.5 mm would be very doable.