It's sad that this behavior is unusual enough to be noteworthy.
The thing about the startup lottery is that in the small chance your startup wins it, that doesn't mean you'll also win.
Founder did take the whole company on a tropical vacation which was unexpected and even paid partially for spouses.
You also had to deal with the post-acquisition career turmoil of either losing your job or having to work for the acquiring company, neither of which would have happened had you taken a market salary at a larger company.
Go be generous with your own money, dude, and quit trying to be generous with other people's.
What really needs to happen is for new ways to organize startups to distribute the risks and responsibilities better, so that it's not up to the goodness of the founder's heart to ensure a good outcome for the employees.
Of course, this implies that the pie is being made bigger, the risks and responsibilities being spread out are actually building more value in the company so as to generate a bigger exit. So far though founder-level discipline and risk-taking is rare enough in one individual that this is the situation we have to deal with.
In fact, I remember reading that round A is the worse time for an employee to join a startup: the large grants are gone, but the business isn't derisked, so your lottery tickets still have shit ev.
Honestly, though - beyond just larger equity grants, I'd like to see companies have people get rewarded when the company does well... Through some kind of bonus (in equity or cash).
It seems like most companies either have bonuses that are pretty much an expected part of salary, or they have no bonus in any situation. I've only really been part of the latter, though.
It's a different level of hard work. And a different set of circumstances if the business fails.
Honestly as a society, we should be less focused on raising the mostly already-high ethical standards of busy founders and more on providing education and support to the next generation of startup founders and startup employees. Employees can bounce to any number of happy-to-have-them bigcos because those skills are almost as rare as those you need to be a founder.
If you're looking for a bottleneck, look in the mirror. There's always more that can be done to build the community. There's a huge hunger for tech skills, tech companies, tech products.
Courting investors does not build value. Building a product builds value.
Plenty of people can and do design products.
In the case of an acquihire, founders, unlike employees, often clear a decent chunk of money (say $.5-$1.5mm) plus get an interesting job. (I personally know of several such cases).
There is plenty of unethical behavior by founders, but most of it isn't discussed in public or on HN, but rather privately between peers.
If you're working at a startup and getting $125-150k, you're lucky. Many people work at startups for half of that or less, plus those lottery tickets.
So if you're good then you may consider moving to one of the bigger players for a substantial increase in pay.
Best of luck! And I really hope that works out for you.
As much as I am a fan of startups and their founders, this statement seems excessive. In many cases, the financial risks are passed on to either angel investors or VCs (there are some startups funded by the founders' own savings or mortgages, which is a big risk, but there are still many that aren't). I don't see any significant negative consequences to the founders if a startup fails (they're not risking personal injury, bankruptcy, a lifetime of debt or anything else as severe).
> there are some startups funded by the founders' own savings or mortgages, which is a big risk
EDIT: Sorry, I now realize you meant startups that grow from their own income (or am I still misunderstanding?). Those don't seem very risky to me, since there's not much high gains/high losses potential to them.
I'm actually not concerned at all about the rewards, 'unfairness' or any other philosophical issues. What I don't like is that there's a myth "the founders bear most of the risk", while in fact, for VC-financed startups the opposite is probably true "the VCs and employees bear most of the risk."
During the previous bubble I was employee #20 of a company that ended up having a $900M exit 5 years later.. I got less than 100k out of the deal. Do I think I was entitled to 50 million dollars? No way.. but I certainly think I added at LEAST 1 million dollars worth of that value.
Say your contribution to the company is worth 1% of the company's value, would you say you added $90k to the value of the company or $9 million?
I think it's hard to put a percentage on any single employee's contribution to a company's success, but I also think it's ludicrous to say that the combined value of every employee's contribution is worth less than a single founder's contribution. It's just dishonest.
That's exactly what employees have to lose too. The way that I've always looked at it is that any employee, founder or not, should be entitled to current-valuation equity that's equal to the difference between their market rate and what they get paid by the startup.
Founders are frequently unpaid or poorly-paid at a time when the valuation is near zero, so they end up with a ton of equity. Early-stage employees should get considerable equity, since they're likely taking salaries well below market and the valuation is still tiny. Late-stage employees likely won't get much equity because they're not taking much below market and the equity is already worth a considerable amount.
Rrright. Only a founder can decide to dilute the stock while keeping that quiet, or do any number of other things. While an employee is on the receiving end.
Anyone who believes the HN community is biased towards founders can see evidence here to the contrary.