It's not like when you sell your company you actually get all your equity as cash, you are certainly still working at your company for a year or more afterwards, with performance incentive stock options based on growth...

But many times you get a significant portion, enough that many founders can simply coast and it doesn't matter.

> you are certainly still working at your company for a year or more afterwards, with performance incentive stock

The meme of founders who sell their companies to Google and just sit there and do nothing has some truth to it.

Btw - when you go public you now have a very different set of "still working at your company" set of challenges and probably far worse with much more public scrutiny. You now answer to securities analysts, shareholders, lawyers, etc.