This. There is a huge opportunity cost, even more so for the “best and brightest” (by whatever definition). The odds of striking it rich are really not in your favor. You may be better off working at big tech for a few years, save up, let the money work for you while you explore your entrepreneurial urge. You have a cushion and maybe that will let you take on bigger and bolder bets than what you could when you come out of college, and you maybe forced to take a “relatively safer” bet because you also have to make money soonish
No you want to take these bets when you are young, its the opposite, you go into stable careers when your appetite for risk and working around the clock has waned
There's an entire generation of FAANG millionaires that just spent a decade out of school working at one of those places and got fabulously wealthy off of it. In fact, it's probably the most likely career to get you rich instead of betting your time on startup equity that might be worth something in 6-10 years.
Yeah great they got into the fastest growing companies of all time at the perfect time
It’s not just the companies are growing. If you get an offer from BigTech with cash + RSUs and the stock stays stagnant, you will still be better off statistically than spending 5-7 years of your life at a startup.
YC is not really advocating you to become a worker at a startup. They want you to become a founder. As a founder you don't need to be a huge success for you to be well off. I'm one of 3 founders currently in a bootstrapped company that has done okay. We are approaching end of year 5. This year we will make 700k revenue, 240k profit and 50% yearly growth. Typically this kind of business is not something a VC would consider investing in, but it can still be profitable for the founders.
I'm not very liquid at the moment. My salary is a measly 60k a year. Most of 80k that is my share of the profit will stay in the company instead of go into my pocket, but the 33% ownership in the company is valuable. Very typical valuations for companies in general is 10x profit, which would mean my share of the company is worth 800k. Companies getting strategically acquired can be 20x revenue, which makes my share of the company worth 4.7million.
At FAANG I would have likely made a liquid 300k * 5 = 1.5million, which would allow me to spend more money and enjoy life right now. However, the next 5 years with my company will likely be a lot more valuable. If we manage to grow 30% a year then after 5 years profit will be 900k. That means 300k a year profit share, 3m valuation at 10x profit and 17m valuation at 20x revenue.
You realize that you’re kind of making my point? Even with your rosy projections, you’re still going to be making much less than a few returning interns I know made in their first three years working at BigTech.
Heck you’re making less than a run of the mill enterprise dev is making in a second tier major city in Atlanta
And as a founder, you still need to do well to do better off than a BigTech employee and statistically you won’t come near.
And on top of that, you’re sounding like every startup that doesn’t realize that they can’t linearly project growth based on past performance. The first cohorts are almost always easier than later cohorts unless it is a platform with network effects.
Don't forget the actual rate of return vs time spent working too. As a founder you're probably working at least 50% more time than the average faang dev, plus the added stress of being in a high impact, high consequence role.
Thought experiment: What group do you think will have the higher median total earnings over 10 years - the group that worked at BigTech or the group that worked at a YC startup?
You make your money first, let it make money for you and then do a startup.
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