Social contract for getting rich as an early startup employee: destroyed

Here is most of what I’ve gathered on the Windsurf / Google Deal

The founders and dozens of engineers are going to Google. This group, along with the preferred shareholders will be sharing the $2.4B headline number. The exact split is unknown but investors are making some money

Jordi Hays

Social contract for getting rich as an early startup employee: destroyed


https://x.com/jordihays/status/1944200891944644997

100 $tipn

Yeah the good days are over, and its arguable if they ever really were that good to begin with.

Defi. Ethereum. Physics.

Data at @quotient.

It depends. @dwr.eth started at Coinbase around the same time I started at a crypto startup. It arguably worked out for him in terms of equity. For me it didn't. So there is some luck/skill component to having founders/board who you can trust to not screw the employees

Might be but arguably it hasn‘t helped SV-based Windsurf employees if they exist

There’s nothing comparable +EV to being physically located in Silicon Valley as an employee. There are exceptions elsewhere, but much less frequent.

Obligatory.

You're actually motivating me to just look at the data. Of all the companies that achieved at least series B starting in 2010, how many actually did go public? How many got screwed in a washed M&A deal?

This is definitely a well defined question. I would bet the public is less than 1% and bad M&A deal is probably 15%.

Oh 100%.

I just fundamentally believe the startup model is broken and the 2010s was just ZIRP + cell phone new market covering growth.

I do believe crypto is a new growth substrate where the risk reward is outsized, but for any traditional company today with AI competition and no real net new consumers, there's zero chance of the exits we saw back during that era.

The issue is also that you can only morally complain, legally a founder/board rug is probably "legally sound." E.g. in a case that I'm familiar with the board just founded a new legal entity in Singapore and then simply stopped to nurture the German company. I know that this also happened to many with tokens and equity