Even if the OP considers the full headline number of $2.4b to be the value of the company, and taking his "1% of fair" number as truth, seven figure payouts would imply all 40 founding engineers had >4% equity which is nonsensical.
Let’s do a simple math. Assume this employee gets 5% of the company (which is super unlikely, but let’s go with it), that is 150m for what could be worth if OpenAI deal went through. 1% of that would be 1.5m.
That is still 7 figure. But this person spent 3 years in a startup, which turned out to be a unicorn and super highly successful, and he bagged a FAANG salary man pay at the end of the deal.
Basically this just proved startup model for normies are completely broken, if your goal is money, don’t join a startup
Who is gonna want to work at a startup in a non-founder role after this and Scale AI?
This continuing degradation of, and flagrant disregard for social norms is destructive for society.
The founders of Windsurf had already gotten their bags, they won't have to work a single day later in their life if they don't want to. The consequences will be bared by the ecosystem.
For the time being I think they are going to be OK, the labor market is employer friendly.
Equity is only to be valued at greater than $0 if the business is publicly traded.
Nevermind that $1m over ~4 years is approximately the same as the differential other public tech co's pay. ($150k + equity at YC co, $350k TC at G/Amzn/FB/Uber/etc.) So when they tell everyone they should work at YC co's, they're saying they're proud when in the absolute best case scenario you make just as much as at the public co's they rail against working for.
If you want to come across as genuine, directly say how much % of the payout went to employees that weren't the founders. They won't, because it's likely 3%, which correctly sounds horrible
that matches my experience working at 2 non-public venture funded companies.
For his assertion to be right, 40 people need to get paid out at least 1 million. That's 1.67% of the company or 0.04% evenly. Its not hard for me to image that up to 10% of this cap table was distributed among the 40 people.
Who did you hear it from Garry, the founder that made out with all the money ? Or the other VC that made a few hundred million from the sale and stands to gain even more if the lie of "founding engineers get rewarded" is perpetuated?
Forty founding engineers? Seriously?
They must have a very expansive definition of founder.