Unless you’re there from day one… get lots of the right options, hang in there long enough, and get lucky. The average employee doesn’t get much compared to the effort put in.

Frankly, out of about 10 startup… only three showed a profit. And only one of those was enough to make a difference in my life (and then not huge… simply allowed me to get into the local real estate market with a down payment for my house.) And another got me 9 months paid leave but not from Stock Options.

You want to get rich… come up with your own idea… however, if you like the small company environment with its ever changing roles and more innovative approaches to problems… then IPO companies are great. But, most employees don’t get rich from them. (In fact… I’ve seen employees get screwed more often than get rich… big time screwed by the execs.)