You can arrive at that perspective very easily by buying $400,000 of lottery tickets -- which is essentially what a lot of early startup employees do, by working for lower-than-market rates.
If you took a salary cut for the last couple of years to work there then $200k doesn't seem like a lot. That's probably a top engineers sign on bonus at Google.
are you serious? How much do you make? Remember we are talking $200k pretax. So maybe $120k after taxes. That's less than half a down payment on a shit house in this area. That's maybe one year of market value cash compensation for an engineer with 5 years experience.
I'm not saying it's nothing, but remember that we are talking about this being one of the rare startup equity "success stories" that you hear about so often in the media.
Of course, I'd take a $200k windfall and be happy for a few days, but it's hardly a life-changing amount of money. I save that much money every 18 months (remember pretax). I wouldn't consider myself wealthy unless I had 50x that amount in the bank
"So maybe $120k after taxes. That's less than half a down payment on a shit house in this area."
As of 2013, the average downpayment on a house is 16%, with a benchmark of 20%. So we'll go with the lesser, as "less than".
So I can probably presume you're likely living in the Valley or NYC if your viewpoint is that $750K will buy you a "shitty house".
Based on assumptions, admittedly, say you own a $1M house (as scoffing at a $750K house as 'shit'...), with a healthy downpayment of $200K (see above) leaves you paying about $5,000/month on an $800K 30 year mortgage.
So, we add that to your savings of $6,600 a month, and we look at a calculator of front end ratios and we arrive at you making about $250K+ a year. Of course, most people at that level of income are not living like paupers in their million dollar houses, savagely squirreling money away (as $250K minus $11.6K/month for mortgage and savings only leaves $2,300/month for car(s), bills, entertainment, etc), so it's probably a reasonably safe assumption that it's at least $300K.
It's interesting your perspective that you wouldn't consider yourself 'wealthy' unless you had (either) $6M in savings, or a (household?) income of $10M+ / year, when in reality, "You are the 2%".
I don't make 250k, but I am pretty frugal overall. I'm not a foodie, so I'd rather spend that money elsewhere. I cleared just under $200k with bonus last year