6 Comments

There's a difference though, an individual startup's equity will probably be worthless to you as an employee. The average return on equity across the industry is not worthless.

The difference is VCs own equity in a spread across the industry. Accepting that for every 10 investments 3-4 will fail outright, 3 will return a 1-100% of the invested capital and 3 will have a positive return. They hope one will become a unicorn.

You as an employee don't have that diversification.

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Strategy is to work at a startup who have raised money from investors. It shows they "might" have a great product. You might get less equity though, but considering 80-95% of startups would fail over the lifetime, it might be worth the less equity in my opinion.

Another strategy would be to get a remote job at big tech and a remote job at a startup. You could improve your skills and career growth a lot while also benefitting from compensations, but you're mostly likely going to throw away your work-life balance working at two jobs.

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While the blog talks about the "money" side of one's career which aligns with the title "Investing your career", I also believe that experience and exposure also contributes to the same. The latter can be found in a much higher quantity and much richer quality in startups as compared to the big tech giants.

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