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Comment by argc | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by big payout in this context?

Enough to retire early.

I think this is around $2M in the US, using what the FIrE community says. Does that seem reasonable, Or are you thinking about $20M+ payouts? (That’s what I would need to retire now.)

"retire early" does not necessarily have to mean "retire tomorrow", I guess it depends how old you are.

If you're in your 20s or 30s, 2M is probably not "retire tomorrow" money, but it would probably let you retire very early if you managed it and made smart investments with it. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think many ICs are getting even 50k from startup equity, nevermind 2M.

20M is "retire tomorrow" money for sure. And definitely workers do not get that kind of money from startup equity.

Most of what I hear now is companies giving fake "shares" that are ostensibly tied to the value of the company but are not actually shares and do not represent any ownership. If they do give shares it's not enough to pay out big, and they get diluted repeatedly over time.

> Most of what I hear now is companies giving fake "shares"

Yep. It's a thing unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_stock

2M is 140k$ yearly with 7% return. You could live very comfortably almost every where.

If you can manage a consistent 7% return then you should be running a hedge fund.

1. you personal savings are more volatile tolerant than big pension funds. SP500 annual avg growth is 10% so you can almost achieve that 7% if you deploy 50/50 split to sp500 index + 30 year t-bonds. 2. It is magnitude more easier to deploy 2 million dollars to market than 2 billion dollars.

If you can offer me a consistent, risk-free 7% return in perpetuity, I will give you all of my money today.

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