Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity

In our case, we offered all vested employees the option of selling in the same round on the same terms.

I personally don’t recall any disclosure requirements at 10 people; however, we didn’t have that many participate so perhaps it didn’t apply.

In general, Founders Preferred does layer on the preference stack but also hopefully by a relatively trivial amount to the overall funding size.

There’s a pretty large risk to family security. By year two of the startup I have made 15-20% the cash I could have made elsewhere. I have stock that I trust will be worth more in the future (so imo worth it). However, I can see liquidity events being useful if you’re tight on cash after that run

cause if you fail you have to tell your investors you lost money

cause if you fail is a thought that’s always running through your head as you live it

1. Caring about the mission -- the real-world positive impact -- and potentially able to make or break that. Not just taking a shot at making money, for some opportunity cost that I could evaluate quantitatively on a napkin, and walk away from as soon as an option with a higher expected dollars number came along.

2. Livelihoods and investments of time&effort by colleagues hinge to a large degree on decisions I make, ideas I have, and things I have to pull off, and not wanting to let them down. (A bit similar with money investors, but I care more about personal connections, and involvements where it's not just someone buying lots of lottery tickets.)

3. Low "paychecks" for my HCOLA, at that startup and earlier, so personally needing a big win financial exit, and the startup is what I decided to invest my time&energy into. If that fails, it's starting over, and a lot of wading through various startup ickiness to get another good opportunity (or doing FAANG interview BS, and then their promotion-chasing BS).

> You don’t lose any money if your startup fails.

Except all the money you lost by not having a proper job along the way. Also it’s not uncommon for founders to float the company at early stage until investment is raised, and they don’t always get a refund for this.

Though if you don't care about anything in the first place what are you doing trying to build a company?

Make this about any brick/mortar businesses and the stresses multiply by another factor. If they're in a federally regulated biz (compliance) or an insurance dominated state (rates, inspections), then multiply again.

Sure, if you magic up a startup with VC funds you suddenly have it easier than a small, bootstrapped business.

Startups almost never start with a round of VC though. There are almost always months or years of the same experience as a bootstrapped business (ie: extreme uncertainty, no money to pay yourself, etc).

Most startups don't manage to raise VC, and most startups that raise VC fail with no acquihire.

"Your biggest challenge is walking into a room full of rich dudes and schmoozing for your pay cheque." - Sounds like you are trolling or alternatively incredibly naive.

"If you start a real business you can expect to take on debt". ... Real business? Come on.

No one in this thread is saying starting a business is easy - ice cream business is debt funded because you have a very definitive range of outcomes. Venture funding is completely different animal - failing to see that limits the value of your comment significantly.

I might rephrase that as you have a non-zero chance. Odds are not that high and certainly not decent.

Can you say more on this? I didn't realize FAANG TCO was quite that high. Maybe it's time to swallow some pride and take the adtech money after all...

I can't help but feel this would be better for the founders, the employees and the customers of the company. It just doesn't make as much sense for the investors.

Unless you are a manager, in which case you are working more like 12 hour a day.

I highly doubt ALL your peers are making that much. And I think the people making $1M per year at FAANG tend to work much more than 6 hour days. You have to be very productive to get $1M per year.

Its like going to Disney Land and saying "Oh i'll just sit at the coffee shop". Some people are here for the ride. Some people like the 9 to 5. Like you, obviously. Why dont you go start corporate-drone-news.org, this board is for hackers and founders.

But beyond that, it’s interesting you picked FAANG SWE and not startup SWE as the basis of your comparison.

The whole premise of the article is that startup employees are often sold a bag of goods about equity and upside that’s simply a terrible deal. Not terrible in the sense that it’s highly risky, but that it doesn’t even come close to compensating for that risk premium. Its sold as FAANG is low risk medium upside but startup SWE is high risks high upside but really its extreme risk and almost no upside because VCs find dozens of ways to carve it out. And people will say startups pay “market” compensation but they almost always mean base salary only, and the equity is such a horrible deal, it’s borderline fraudulent scam on the part of founders to sell startup employees on the equity as a fair deal.

As an aside, when people think SWEs don’t need unions/ professional associations, they think of teachers unions or autoworker unions where pay is standardized on seniority. Instead, we could have something where our lawyers in our camp could review equity terms and we could collectively advocate for things like liquidity deals. That will never ever happen if you only trust the deals the VCs and founders offer.

Well, some founders care about their employees and their idea, and the idea of the start up failing is much more than just money.

There isn't much point sweating for another person's dream, go big with your own startup or rest and vest at FAANG and live life.

I think you overestimate median pay at the FAANGs by quite a lot.

There is quite a bit of work involved in reaching the point where you write a check for a Series A round. Also, the better VCs spend significant time with their portfolio companies.

Also Elon famously put 200 million of his own money into Tesla and SpaceX to keep it afloat, which is the opposite of cashing out early.

  A: I’ve seen many founders who got deep into the fundraising cycles without ever realizing they could take a cent out.

  B: I have known zero founders who have turned down an option to take money off the table [...] I love the idea of your universe, though.

Have seen companies offer this to employee's

And companies that let employee's take money off the table at series A are also likely to be generous with meaningless titles; that is they will let early employee's call themselves founders.

I was offered the option to liquidate up to 20% of my vested shares at my last company's Series A. It was restricted by tenure though (3 years), so it wasn't available to everyone. In retrospect, I should have liquidated the full amount, but it was a new concept to me at the time and I was more conservative with the amount.

I more recently interviewed with a pre-series A company and they said that they'd include me in a liquidity event when I brought up compensation.

It's also not in the interest of the VC that the founders are worried about making their rent or mortgage payments, or paying off the credit cards they maxed out paying their AWS bills in the early stages of their company.

The VCs want their founders to be hungry for more, and see their company's growth as a vehicle for that. But they don't want founders to be stressing over basic human needs, either.

Any VC that would refuse to let you take some liquidity in these situations is not a VC you want to make a deal with. And if you can only find VCs like that, your company is probably doing poorly enough that you might want to rethink what you're doing.

When you sell your stocks before 5 years of holding period has passed, you pay significantly higher taxes. So you don't get 500k net, you get 500k gross, or probably 300k net. Which makes the de-risking less compelling.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qsbs-qualified-small-bu...

When they finally sold about a decade later I ran the numbers and determined it would have been about $40,000 based on the actual sale price.

There's no guarantee of a $50M exit for anybody.

The other thing I've noticed is that for people on the other side of this transaction, it's not like "smaller numbers" all of a sudden become immaterial. $1M is still $1M. $5M is still $5M.

Again, I'm with you, I don't think it's regret exactly. But post hoc you might choose differently, even if it's the rationale choice at the time.

$500K is an immediate big quality of life boost for most people.

For example: a condo/house downpayment, which lets you move out of cruddy ramen apartment, to routinely get a good night's sleep. And/or that relieves some of the various other startup salary level money stresses on your family.

I think this can also be aligned with the goals of the startup. You don't want people so "hungry" that the stress is hurting their health and their home lives. You want them motivated by the mission, the work, the environment, and the possible big liquidity windfall in the future -- but not by desperation.

Plus, setting 100K aside for medical bills and even throwing the 400K into Bitcoin is a far less risky investment than me NOT being in a FAANG and accumulating 401K money which is absolutely critical if you want to keep up with the rising cost of life through retirement. When everyone else who joined Google or Meta out of college and now has a 10 million net worth at 40, that defines the cost of living in the area, and that's the bar you have to keep up with if you want to still live here at 40, 50, 60. Chipotle will cost $50 in a few years. A 1 bedroom apartment will cost $5000 in a few years. UberEats was $15 when it started, already costs $50 for lunch in my area, and at this rate, it will be $200 in a few years. Because those people can afford it, so greedy owners and greedy landlords will up their prices, so I will have to pay not just my $5000 rent, but also the Chipotle worker's rent, and the Chipotle franchise's rent, in order for their prices to stay profitable. The cost of living in the bay has tracked the S&P500, not the CPI. YOU will be priced out if you didn't have liquidity at a younger age to throw into some investments.

I'm at a large company right now. Being compensated enough to be able to afford life in the bay area now, having enough income to afford a mold-free modern apartment in a place where I don't need to worry about getting mugged, and hedge the risks of all the crap that's going on in the world was a big part of my reason to join one. If I had enough saved to "feel safe", I would absolutely be doing a startup again.

I actually kinda think a founder that was otherwise already wealthy wouldn't mind this too much, either: say they already have $50M in the bank; the difference between $95M and $100M feels even less of a big deal than $45M and $50M. Granted, the founder with $50M already in the bank probably wouldn't bother with the $500k in the first place, though, especially if they believed in the likelihood (or guarantee, in your hypothetical) of a future larger exit.

The only reason it happens is that the founder is negotiating both on behalf of the business and a bit for themselves.

There is a good book review about it on SSC https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-laws-o...

> Whether or not you make money, you have regrets! If you profited, you could have made more. If you lost money, you shouldn’t have made the trade at all. Like death and taxes, you can’t avoid adverse selection.

The issue here is that sometimes if you procrastinate about diversifying, it pays off very well. As a Google employee (who joined after IPO), it was by far my best investment and funded my retirement.

I guess that's accidental gambling. I did have other investments.

Disclaimer: I’m an IC myself.

I worked for my 1st company for 15 years. Held to their RSUs most of the time. Then moved to another (public) company and stayed there for a year before leaving. Now in a startup with a lower salary and no immediate liquidity on my stock options.

When you work at a public company, you have multiple exposures to the company’s growth: the RSUs that have already vested, the RSUs that haven’t vested yet and through your own career growth and salary increase that goes with a successful company. If you were early enough, you also get market cred for having made the company successful. If the companies goes under (or shrinks, or lays people off), all those assets are at risk.

Usually, one has more in granted stocks than in vested stocks. If your company just went public, you might have a lote more sellable than in your pipeline, but even that is unusual. Usually, you’ll still have more in the pipeline than you’ve already vested.

If your company has been public for a while, you should get frequent refreshes, which means you still have a significant numbers of unvested shares.

Regardless, you should sell as soon as you can, because of the remaining exposure through unvested equity. Use the proceeds to place in an ETF, or in a high-yield savings account, or some more aggressive investment strategy. Or use it for the downpayment on your house, or fund your kid’s college funds, whatever floats your boat.

Anyways, keep in mind that you still have a significant exposure to the growth of the company through your unvested equities. If you’re worried about short-term cap gain, don’t be. If you sell immediately, there’s no growth between cost basis and selling price, so no cap gain. Another upside to selling is that you’re not bound by the blackout periods, so your assets are much more liquid. And remember you still have exposure

Ultimately it's an investing decision. If you believe the stock price is going up at a rate faster than the rest of the market, and are willing to accept the risk that a concentrated position like that entails, then that can make financial sense.

For people who want to hold their RSUs but still want to diversify to some extent, my usual recommendation is to pick some percent of the shares that vest every quarter to sell immediately, and hold the rest. And -- critically -- to stick with that commitment every single quarter, and not fall into the trap of thinking "oh, the stock seems to be doing so well, I'll skip the sale this quarter". (Of course, a measured re-evaluation of the plan is a reasonable and good thing to do every so often.)

I totally understand why a typical founder doesn't want to do that. If for you as an employee it is a deal breaker, then you can complain about it, change company or whatever. It is not like the founder owes anything to the employees (unless he has promised that). Everyone in the equation are adults and have to decide themselves, if the position they are in makes sense for them with the terms they have.

But they're a small minority. Not that many people meet your description here.

Yes, if $500k doesn't move the needle on your life then the question is moot anyways. Most first-time founders will be closer to the poor end of the spectrum than the wealthy side.

There are people reading this for which $20k will change their life (which in my example was the 'shouldn't matter' amount instead of the $500k).

Perhaps not much, but most people -- even most startup founders -- don't come from a rich family.

Either they have the skills to be a founder themselves or to work at BigTech... or they are financially ignorant/disinterested enough to not understand how equity in corporations work? Or is the charming and misleading founder who is to blame?

My point is that considering the high avg intelligence of the typical startup employee, there must be something else going on.

Clearly, people like working at smaller companies that have potential to grow - maybe that's because there's more interesting work, less bureaucracy, smaller teams, more of a sense of a journey, etc. Easy to devalue these things, but what else explains the fact that even when there's more risk and likely poorer financial outcomes these otherwise very intelligent people still choose to work at these companies?

Have you been a founder? If not, I'm not sure you fully realize what goes into the job. Everyone wants to be a founder, but nobody wants to _be_ a founder.

Sure, maybe their longer-term trajectory is unsustainable growth and disappointing surprises for founders and employees, but by that point your bootstrapped company has already shut down.

But, by all means, find a market where there's scant VC money to be found, and you can probably bootstrap for quite some time without funding. And maybe you will eventually decide to take on funding, but instead of giving 60% of your company away to get it, you only have to give away 30%. Or you decide that giving away 60% is fine, in return for 10x as much investment as you might otherwise get at an earlier stage.

I know a non-zero number of people who have gone that route, and it's worked for them. If I were to start a company, I'd aim for this model myself. But I would have to be very careful choosing my product and market.

I couldn't be happier. Neither panned out for me with regards to stocks, and I definitely didn't get rich in the process, but I very much enjoyed the jobs and when I decided to leave it was only because the business direction wasn't a fit for what I wanted to spend my time on.

It sure sounds like a privledged position, but it more came down to us living cheaply compared to our income and having the breathing room to trade a higher salary for work that I really enjoyed. I hope more people can make that tradeoff, it's much more fulfilling in my opinion

You drop them a bunch of messages to get signoff for the thing that absolutely had to go live on Thrusday and dont hear from them till Sunday because they are tripping on Ayahuasca in the desert.

There's a "serious discussion" to be had next time about your work ethic.

People don't like to say "no" or "can't do it in that timeline" and other permutations of these statements. If you can't even challenge or disagree with anything, then you're doing something wrong, or you're in the wrong environment, or both.

20 years into my career and still practicing this.

One hack: I can't respond when I'm asleep! So, I head to bed pretty early (9:30-10 EST).

As someone in a similar place in my life, I'd never take a job like that either.

There's a reason why people in their 20s or early 30s, and/or without a partner or kids, are over-represented in early startups. When I was deepest in my startup work as an employee, I had no time to date, and didn't bother to try. My friends barely saw me; most of the little socializing I did was with my co-workers, and that socializing often felt more like work than play, as we were usually discussing (or complaining about) work.

I do know people our (current) age, with families, who have done it, but I frankly have no idea how, and I'm sure it put a strain on their marriage and on their relationship with their kids.

On the flip side, as someone who has no kids (and doesn't intend to have any), I have noticed a lot more tolerance for missing work / missing meetings / ducking out for a while when it's for childcare than for any other reason. But a childless employee is seen as having no excuse for needing time out of the office here and there for whatever reason. (I suppose this is true to some degree of both startups and established companies, though.)

If they go all out in 12 months, they would actually be considered a winner/failure. Purgatory is comfortable.

Founders just get greased palms along the way if they're successful.

I was in a company when my options were "purchased" from me at the strike price, when the company itself was sold. We never made it to IPO. I've learned to not overvalue options and phantom stock, and just chalk it up to another bonus down the road. The real money is, or already has been, made elsewhere.

What really steams my biscuits is when I figured out how the payout was worth less than the unpaid overtime (never more than 50 hours a week), weekend support time, and travel time spent in my years there.

I actually think going to a Series C or D is not the ideal play. It’s better to join an early company, with good leadership, reasonable if not mind blowing salary and cheap shares. Then, work hard, but not brutally hard. Somewhere that you enjoy the people, the work/product, and you can level up a lot. The options are cheap, and you can bail to FAANG at any time if you burn out. Realistically, that’s your shot at making 1% of $Xmm without completely hating your life. It will be a rare company so, yeah- be picky. I don’t know why all startups get lumped into one when there’s a lot out there for the discerning employee.

I didn’t get rich because I wanted to sleep at night, but people in my orbit (probably me in theirs?) advised me very differently.

And I have seen a few founders fail and enter bigger companies at a pretty high position. Not sure I would relate that to how much money they should get in case their startup is one of the lucky ones.

But anyway, as founding engineer you get to set the systems, culture, language etc. maybe some people don’t want the responsibility but for others it’s an opportunity to build things out in our own image and learn a lot.

One of them is my neighbor, an early Microsoft employee. She basically retired in her 30s.

Im cynical and ultimately an rebuilding my dev career around a platform that will give me opportunities for entrepreneurship AND individual contributor work as an employee (Apple Ecosystem - iOS client development + product dev/mgn).

If I were to do it over again I 100% would've avoided startups early in my career when I could lean on junior positions to grow in a more mainstream manner. I'd have more money in my pocket, less stress, and less cynicism.

--

The problem is there is objectively zero way for fresh grads to learn these lessons. Even with prominent threads like these being available to some, the bearish attitude in every other thread will be more appealing to a fresh grad.

I see this a lot in failing startups:

The CTO is a pure manager who can't do any actual engineering. The result is that the shares and salary that could have been traded for getting product to market faster & better ends up being burnt on an empty chair.

If none of the founders are technical enough to build the MVP, none of them should take the CTO title.

2) There's plenty of bullshit that can be used to cheat an employee out of their options. One example here [1].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless-employee-...

For private sales, which can be structured in a variety of ways, there's a bucket order that can vary depending on the share structure (remember options aren't shares until converted). Most VCs have terms that they get paid out first to recoup their investment (and often then some) before common or option holders get paid out.

So for a simple example (I'm making these numbers and percentages up): Say if VCs invested $10m for 30% of a startup with a guarantee of first rights to get that back and 50%, then a founder class of shares owns a percentage, say 50%, and then there's a class of common shares/options that are in theory 20% of the company. So in thoery, the investors own 30%, employees on 20%, and founder(s) 50%.

Let's say then that the company then sells for $20m. The investors get their $10m back, plus $5m for their 50% return guarantee. The founder class of shares has rights to 50% of the company, but all that's remaining is the $5m left over which is 25%; they get it all. Everybody else gets shit unless the buyers want to retain any employees and give them anything extra (this can happen).

Things like this happen a lot. I knew people that worked at 500px (the photo site) and eventually the investors forced a sale after the business stagnated that even the founders got nothing in the end.

we did this on our crypto token grants though. once we realized we can play with the prices much more than with securities and that vesting isn’t standardized by any law, we granted ourselves deeply discounted tokens in a vesting schedule of like 3 months, the whole grant being a couple hundred dollars and launched the token the next day. mailing the IRS the election was beautiful.

Fast forward four years of toil with multiple cycles of doubling and then halving headcount as well as endless leadership changes. We are now on our fourth CTO in as many years. On the upside things are starting to look up! The newest sales team have worked out how to sell the original product we built, not the bells and whistles we pivoted to on the wisdom of the overpaid CPO. We can now celebrate as we have about a year's worth of runway and can confidently project being cash flow positive in about six months.

The new ex-FAANG CTO earning three times as much as anyone in the original team has great news! As a result of the positive development we are now able to hire an extra development team in South America! This shouldn't cost us too much and they can start on the next greenfield effort. The existing developers need not worry about being replaced as the existing team has all of the experience with the money making side of the business, and besides the new devs will be working on a parallel offering anyway.

Four weeks later and we've onboarded two offshore devs. The VCs have demanded we cut our burn rate and my position is being made redundant. I have 90 days to exercise but my options are underwater, both when compared to the funds we raised a few months ago and also the FMV. Essentially to buy them now I would be worse off than someone walking straight off the street.

I always just assumed that the Entrepreneur, Founder & CEO had come up with an amazing idea like "build an startup (Ai probably) that makes a lot of money" and got some funding - but don't know what software is, don't know how to code and isn't really sure what Ai is does or can be used for; so need someone to put the pieces together to execute their vision with (for) them.

Opportunity to get in the ground floor with a future Unicorn - must have 25 years experience, Salary $25,000, 2% equity with 5 year lock-in.

Even stake might be worthless, if the company fails, despite you building a kickass backend for it.

If you don't have cash on hand to pay for early taxes, the company can pay a signing bonus or something for those who elect 83(b) to pay for the upfront taxes.

OR

Just pay market salaries and leave the choice to employees to do whatever they want with cash. You want to buy our company stock great here's the grant. You want to put your money in S&P index go ahead.

The employee equity part needs a lot more simplification. I don't know why it is not as simple as

Here are 2 options for you

Salary 200K OR Salary 100K Equity 100K If equity 100K exercise 83(b) - pay taxes at 200K income OR defer taxes for the subsequent exercise dates. (Could land a huge tax bill) OR defer the exercise date for a liquidity event/secondary sale.

Those who value risk will take the last option and those who don't will stick to full salary. 83(b) exercise, when presented like this, doesn't seem all that rosy.

There could be some legalities that I am unaware of, but broadly this should work.

By doing bad quality work on purpose will not make you learn anything. Better idea is to leave your underpaid position, start your own startup or join another that has better salary and compensation.

In startups that experience internet growth, you find yourself trying to build systems so fast and hire people that you aren't so worried about someone replacing the job you used to have because the nature of your job is changing as the company scales.

And if the startup is not growing, you can stop worrying about the equity package

Do you just go for the market salary and treat the equity as a minor plus?

Morally/ethically, if you're building everything single-handedly from the start, you are a cofounder. Obviously the original founders have no legal obligation to compensate you as such, of course.

But for some people, direct access to an AWS account and license to build as they please is intoxicating.

5% is an unusually high % of equity, the founders likely assumed you were happy to trade-off cash for equity. Series A is usually a dilutive round and it's normal to grant people like yourself more options to compensate for the dilution (i.e. to keep you at 5% of the new cap table).

My 2¢: I know people in your position who have ~$200k cash comp in addition to meaningful equity. Don't feel bad about asking for more cash, if your founders have a good relationship with you and you're providing value for the company, they'd rather invest the marginal cash in you and keep you happy + comfortable.

Founders generally need to go down with the ship, early employees do not. If the growth trajectory starts to falter after 1.5-3 years, just get out of there and try another company. Let the founders clean it up (and you have equity in case they do).

Sounds like you're dismissing the idea that being an early employee is hard.

Wait, is this a serious question? The limiting factor is VC money, of course.

Those are the only three outcomes for a venture backed startup.

As for employees? They are typically not calling the shots about company direction. I don't see a reason why investors would care about employees.

Only once the startup has matured at least a little, too much money too early and your hungry founders become lazy.

If you have access (or have friends with access) to PitchBook, their file on WeWork would have comprehensive data about all the liquidity events.

Why is Bob not in the same situation? They both are taking a financial loss in the hopes of having more valuable land to sell. Why shouldn't Bob have the same right to sell his portion of the land that Alice has?

should the employees have a legal claim against the money that was taken in the secondary transaction?

They did not do that alone. If they had, there would be no employees to keep secrets from.

Someone is going to point out that giving actual shares is a taxable event. And that is sometimes the rational for options. But there are work arounds: you can put shares in a 401k for example. 401ks were originally created to be employee incentives, but morphed into being used for retirement, but you can still do it either way.

They can get options, they can get equity, they can get nothing (beyond salary).

Options are common probably because it gives (the company) more or easier control over what happens when.

That same company eventually raised a sizeable equity round and then began issuing options for new employees. If they were to continue issuing equity grants, the cost to purchase the grant would be much more than $200 (likely tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars). Alternatively, if the company were to give employees equity grants directly instead of having to buy them then that would count as income and the employees would owe taxes on the equity gained. The tax bill could also easily be tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Options avoid all of that and defer the upfront costs that come with an equity grant.

Imo, the real problem is that options can be clawed back once you no longer work for the company.

As the company with equity, any calls you’re selling are guaranteed covered, which hedges against downside loss of having given away equity and it exploding in value. Calls also theoretically align incentives better than equity because it gets the staff member personally interested in seeing the stock rise, rather than just selling immediately to take profit if they’re short your company’s future outlook.

Lots of other nice properties - If you sell the option, either discounted or at some full price, you make a money premium, which helps runway. If the stock falls, you make money from having chosen options and basically don’t have to give the employees anything. If the stock rises, you’re probably making great sums from your (much larger) equity share, and your losses versus just giving them equity are essentially capped at the difference between the current price and strike price, instead of theoretically unlimited cost. This is easily quantified with some multiplication when issuing the options, meaning in a growing company, you have knowably limited exposure, and essentially are just giving them the equity you would’ve given them anyways.

It's such a garbage situation right now for employees, because even if you find product-market fit, you do the work and your company is successful you can still get dumped on by your founders taking secondaries and subsequently checking out of the company.

On the other hand, I can't stand how corporate politics corrupt a product's vision. Even low-level politics like "strategy taxes" are infuriating.

But for software, and my impression is that it is even more like this in most other industries, a huge amount of tech ventures never receive any funding. Many of these are never even properly incorporated and may not be included in datasets. Then, for the ones that do raise seed money, usually with SAFEs, 50-60% of them would fail before raising a significant priced round (series A).

The overall point being, there’s a lot of risk between starting a company and raising a sizeable priced round for most people.

I imagine other companies went through a similar scenario but failed before series A

Even that averages to a senior Eng salary for the very very few founders who get there.

This has to be tempered by other realities - no social life - working 80 hours a week easily - risking personal finances - health problems - good chance of divorce / no deep relationships

Starting a company is no joke.

Very few get to series B/C.