I was early at Palantir (employee #10). Trust me, the founders assumed way more risk than I did when I joined. I didn't even quite understand that fact until I myself started a company. If you know the Airbnb story, you'll know these guys worked their asses off on an idea nobody else believed in. As legend would have it, Joe had a binder of credit cards the way kids would have binders of baseball cards. Think about that sacrifice when you criticize their action today.

Incidentally, this is one of the best reasons to found a company -- equity is distributed in such a way that those who take the biggest risk will be properly rewarded.

Secondly, founders taking money off the table has become common. As mentioned in this very comment thread: "Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, and Parker each got $1m from Accel when they raised their $12.7m Series A according to David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect."

This is both at a far earlier stage, and far more money on percentage basis compared to the overall valuation of the company. I wasn't party to the deal, but I highly doubt any other early Facebookers got liquidity then. But those same people are definitely not complaining today.

I personally don't think anyone got screwed here.