[wikfwikf]

It seems insane to me that the happy path involves you getting $70k. Working in finance, I would expect that amount as a bonus in any year where I perform well and the business isn't unprofitable.

When I've spoken to people about the finance/big tech/startup trade-offs, we've often talked about the upside from startup success (outside of the Google or Instagram case) being around an order of magnitude bigger than that - in the 'pay off your mortgage' ballpark. Is this unrealistic?

[saalweachter]

I've only got an N of one under my belt, but I'd also note I wasn't a founder or even a pre-series-A employee. I believe the former got more like what you're thinking, and the latter 2x or so what I did. Also I honestly can't recall if that was a pretax or post number at this point.

But on the other end of things... it was still a nice cap on my time there. And even if it's not quit-your-job money, it was still an Everest.

(An Everest being the amount of money it takes to climb Everest, buy a luxury car or a small cabin on a lake, or any other number of reasonably achievable dreams.)