Why the after 2008 foundatuon criteria. Someone who joined FB in 2010 could have got rich right? Same with Google, Amazon, most other unicorns that established before 2008.

Oh, it's somewhat arbitrary, but Facebook was founded in 2004 and by 2010 no longer counts to me as a "startup". I suppose 2010 is still pre-IPO (2012) and therefore has a chance for advantageous stock grants.

(Not lost in all this: over the years the tax treatment of option grants has changed! It used to be a hugely advantageous way of giving employees something of value, and that's been eroded a lot.)

Get rich in the sense of "decent salary, and HODL the company stock", sure. Get rich in the sense of riding that startup VC wave, no.

Amazon had north of 100,000 employees by the time I joined in 2012. The "plucky startup" days were long gone, even if they did still tell the fable of the door desks at every orientation class

GPT: whatsapp, instagram, airbnb, slack, uber, snap

Fact check: almost totally correct, most founded in 2009 except Airbnb which was 2007. Interesting. Seems like 2009 was a good year for startups; I guess building at the market bottom is a good way to ride the market up.

Also coincides with the start of the app + REST economy

The gig economy at least in part grew out of a giant wave of unemployment.

There were also suddenly a lot of people without a home to sleep in, and suddenly a lot of homes on the market.

Basically, right after a crash is the best time to do anything.

Openai?

The slave isn't going to turn on its master ;)

No exit in view.

Solidfire (which never got talked about at all on HN) fits the bill nicely.

Everyone has a different interpretation of "substantial", but I'll say Nest.

If you look at the companies that went public from 2018-2021 (boom/tail end of the latest "bubble"), you should assume that all of those generated somewhere in the range of 25-500+ non-founders who cleared $1m+ worth of stock pre-tax (a small-mid cap SaaS will be on the lower end, Uber/AirBnB will be at the higher end).

It's harder to know from acquisitions, but I'd guess that most of those with sale prices >$1b generated ~10-250 non-founders with $1m+ share packages. I think that the Qualtrics founders said that they minted 250 millionaires from their initial sale to SAP.