I’m 0 for 3 on startup equity being worth anything and have since left the industry.
One of the startups I did some time at was as close to a sure thing as one can hope for (unicorn valuation at one point) but it still went to zero in a very public flame out. It’s still impossible not to get imaginative about what could have been as I was a very early employee… such is life.
The most lucrative stretch of my career was working for a big company that paid good base salaries.
Same. 1 startup is dead-dead. 1 startup is now a husk of itself used by the CEO for fractional CxO consulting, and 1 is down from unicorn status to limping along with 1/5th the staff.
The primary benefit of startups is getting to do more work to learn more faster and not deal with Process.