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>>The thing is, it's not usually easy to make money at that rate as a small company, especially on the consumer side. That is objectively a lot of money.

This is like saying you want a F1 car, but won't driving fast at all. But you need it anyway. Much of this making money thing depends on knowing how to use people to make money. If you can't use a rockstar or don't even need one why expect them to work for you.

>>they're typically only worth that much when applied to a problem that impacts a huge number of people, as at Google, FB, Netflix, etc.

Ironically, the chances of a somebody good ending up working on something trivial are high in such places. You can easily get 'placed' into some place where your skills can just rot without having any hope of moving out.

If your expected return on a project is less than your planned costs to complete the project, why would you start at ANY price?

Because there's something you want to make? And it's possible in the long term to ramp up to that point, it's just that these salary expectations make the first few years rather difficult - almost dependent on raising money at the absurd valuations that are currently the norm.

Just saying, something's gotta give.

You have to pay if you want to play.