[mrkurt]

That's pretty much the age old debate about wealth. But the actual definition of millionaire is "someone whose assets are worth more than $1 million".

A VC investment is literally the exchanging shares for money. No it doesn't make someone liquid. Yes it does set something sorta like a market value, though it's usually really high. In more meaningful terms, that company now has $8 million in cash. There's almost no scenario where it's worth less than $8 million now, because companies at that stage usually have very little debt.

[jstandard]

There are many scenarios where the founder is less than $8 million though, even on paper. The article doesn't give details about what % of the company Lee still owns or what their balance sheet or margins look like.

Based on that article, we don't actually know if Lee has assets worth $1 million. This is all before even bringing up how liquid he is.

[BigCatStuff]

I agree with all of your points. However, the 'company' having $8 million in the bank does not mean that the 'founder' has or will ever have $1 million.

The expectation of funding is that it is spent growing the company (employees, inventory, etc), not immediately paid out to the founders.