The oft-cited quote is that it's very, very, very rare to make money working as an employee at a Startup. The farther you are away from the founding team, the harder it is. And 99 times out of a 100 even the founding team doesn't make anything, if there's an upside exit at all.
If you want to work at a startup as a non-founder employee, go into it knowing that you're taking the risk and getting little of the potential upside reward. If the pay is good and you like the company and the work, then do it. But any stock options will be mostly meaningless.
I wish Founders would just let Employees participate in seed stage financing and be in with the same terms as early investors if the employees want to truly risk it.
I mean it makes sense. Let's say your salary would be $120k plus $30k in stock. Rather than giving you stock as options, you could just be given that stock as equivalent value (subject to a vesting schedule) and on the same terms of the Seed Round. No money out of pocket... am I missing something?
If you want to work at a startup as a non-founder employee, go into it knowing that you're taking the risk and getting little of the potential upside reward. If the pay is good and you like the company and the work, then do it. But any stock options will be mostly meaningless.
I wish Founders would just let Employees participate in seed stage financing and be in with the same terms as early investors if the employees want to truly risk it.