[tompetry]

> The founder in this scenario was offered $400,000 of liquidity at Series A and $750,000 at Series B and encouraged to do so by their board of investors to de-risk their own life.

This is from the article. I would tend to agree with you.

[adastra22]

I straight up don't believe the article. (Edit: not saying author is lying, but that they're extrapolating from bad data.) I've worked as employee #3 at one startup, co-founded another which achieved >$3bn valuation, and am now solo-founding a third. I've networked with lots of other founders. I've never, ever heard of a secondary liquidity offer in a Series A.

I think the paragraph above that quote explains it. They're talking about founders that "mortgaged their house and lived on ramen noodles for years." It actually sounds like they got screwed out of some equity. Rather than pay themselves a reasonable salary to support their lifestyle as they build the company, they instead traded equity for a one-time payment. That's a shitty deal, and I want to know who this predatory VC is so I make sure I never take money from them.

[ivalm]

This so much. So many folks in this thread are talking about series B+ and only paying themselves under 100k/yr and that’s just a scam. Once you have institutional money you can just start paying yourself enough to live ~comfortably.