Company will IPO in the next 4 years, current salary above market rate, will leave the company right after the IPO to "spend more time with my family". I want to maximise my gain and willing to gamble a few $ off my pay.
Also, how liquid are these shares? If you can sell at IPO, cool. If you have to hold them for a year watching to see if the share price holds or (somewhat likely) collapses, not so good.
I'd take the salary and buy stock in public companies with it.
Not that I'm advising you to speculate on the market... I just buy ETFs lol
Look at the last 12 months. Multiple sub-sectors of public equities down >80%. Do you think people saw that coming? If they believed it enough to bet on it, the opportunity to profit was huge. That's to say nothing of private valuations.
And yet every startup with some traction and a proof of concept PMF seems confident an exit is on the horizon. Maybe for parts of the last decade this was true, but now...