>> A $10M acquihire brings $3M to the founders, so they are likely to accept the offer, leaving them significantly richer, and you with $100K that are unlikely to cover what you would have made if you joined Google instead.

This doesn't sound like a very bad scenario at all. 100K is a lot of money. Also, back then there was a risk that maybe Google would not have grown as much as it did.

>> But if you join as employee #10, and are offered 0.1% of shares, the story is completely different. If the company exits for $100M, you only get $60K, which is a completely meaningless number if you invested few years of your life into the company.

That's almost one year of an average person's salary in the US. It could pay for someone one year to work on their own project.