Seems to me that if you build a startup that's acquired by Google (say for the relatively small sum of $5m after a couple of years) that's still a whole lot more than you would have earned as a salary - even if you're a cofounder with just 50%. And on top of that you end up getting another good salary from Google as well once they acquire you.
In short, most people are making a salary, and of those that try to found their own company, most will end up failing and making less than they would have if they took a salaried gig. That is the risk of founding a company.
But every year you spend working on a failed startup, you might only earn $50,000 (let's assume you can draw a small salary off of investors or revenue). And let's also say there's a 10% chance of success. The EV for spending a year on startup(s) wound be $95,000, which is probably within wiggle room of what you could earn with a salary.
However, that's average. If you're clever and determined, your chance won't be 10%. At 25%, the EV goes up to $262,500 per year. That's a hard salary to get. But few people are sufficiently awesome to have a 25% shot, I suspect. (It's hard to say because there aren't many truly large sample sizes out there yet.)
Your average net income over the period of time it takes you to get a $5M exit will probably exceed your earnings from that exit, which will likely be less than $1M.
The point is that startups are not an easy or guaranteed way to make killer money. That's gold rush thinking. Think about how many startups (thousands) are in Silicon Valley right now and how many have exited in the last 5 years (dozens).
Don't get me wrong. Live the dream. I'm working at my 6th startup, and I just started my first one. But don't do it for the money. Do it because you're creating something you believe should exist in the world.
Because 99% of people make more money collecting a salary than they do being bought by Google.
He directly compared collecting a salary to being bought by Google, he did not compare earning a salary to starting your own company. The latter would be a fair statement, but if you are going to get bought by Google, chances are you will make more money than by earning a salary (unless you're an investment banker).
No more (and likely SIGNIFICANTLY less) than 375,000 people have been acquired by Google,
There are 154.9 million people in the American workforce (collecting salaries).
The actual number (based on the above information) leads us to believe that 99.998% of people make more money collecting a salary than they do being bought by Google.
It's worth noting, perhaps, that I might be counting the wealthiest 2% of Americans within the 154.9 million census number (or that there are dramatically fewer employees in the workforce since the bubble burst), but those wealthy folks were almost certainly not acquired by Google (although, if they were, it doesn't skew the numbers that significantly.)