[mahyarm]

As all the FTC standard warnings say, past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

A wealthy founder has already past the point of "fuck you money" and financial independence. Adding another $10 million to his current $10 million isn't going to have a very meaningful effect on their life. Another $+100 million will, which why they go big or die trying, because cashing out with a $10 million payoff is the same thing in their lives as failing. Also running your own company is fun in itself.

You as an employee do not have financial independence most likely, and independence will be a huge change to your life. It's the incentive conflict of interest that is the fundamental issue here. Non-wealthy founders will probably have a cash out point in their heads and will take bird in the hand offers that would give them financial independence.

Also I say wealthy founders, not successful founders. A founder can become wealthy via many means. He could of been an early employee of a successful company (like BeOS and Jean Louis Gasse). Had a relatively minor success after a decade of struggle and made it super big (uber). Cashed out halfway through and is now wealthy (evernote, twitter and many others), etc.

Wealthy founders will do things like reject $400m offers when a company has existed for a year and only has $10m in series A funding because they want to be the next superstar / 'unicorn'.