[medius]

Yes. I generally like to make a reverse calculation when evaluating such offers. To get $1 million out of this risk, the company has to exit for $1 billion if I have 0.1% stake. How likely is it? And that's before considering dilution, preference stocks, option exercise problems, etc.

Joining a BigCo can give $1 million (above startup salary) in 5 years with a very high probability.

[GoatOfAplomb]

And AFTER considering all those other factors, you may need to see a $10B exit to get your $1M.

[deanmoriarty]

Ditto! I have been at a startup that was pretty successful and generated a payout for me of about $1M post taxes.

The original grant plus all the refreshers would have originally amounted to ~$8M (I was within the first 3 employees), but joining early means that at each and every single round you'll be massively diluted (20%+, and there are many of those from a seed round up to a series D/E), and this is without counting the liquidation preference (which in my case was a good 1X non-participating) and other stuff (e.g. emitting new shares for the newly hired fancy CEO that will help us sell the company, refreshers will have a higher cost basis, ...).

If you join early, expect your relative slice of the pie to shrink by roughly an order of magnitude. In the best case.