Comment by tachyonbeam
6 years ago
> A profitable startup can, in fact, pay through the roof.
But most startups don't become profitable, most startups fail.
IMO, you should basically assume that any stock options a startup offers you are worth zero. Decide if you want the offer based on the base pay and how interesting/stimulating the work is.
Sure. Upon re-reading my comment I wasn't very clear. What I meant was along the lines of: the past decade VCs have convinced startups that they don't need to be profitable for many years. That's a pretty recent aberration. It took Google less than 3 years to become profitable, for instance.
I think the argument is less between "startups" and "tech giants" and more between "profitable companies" and "unprofitable companies". Profitable companies can also grow quickly, after all.