All good points, the other I'd add is that I really think joining as an early employee is optimizing for happiness. Starting a startup is really hard and more often than not results in broken relationships, tons of debt and several months of severe depression.
As an employee at an early startup, you can still get significant upside exposure (eg make millions or tens of millions in a success scenario) while being able to "just code", have a much more normal work-life balance, and having much less exposure to risk.
If you're decently good at picking good startups to join, it is probably also an easier way to get seven-to-eight digits rich than starting your own company, since a lot of the risk is already removed.
Umm, I will have to disagree that an early employee status is a guarantee to making millions.
First of all i havent heard of that many early employees getting anywhere close to 3%, most of the time its between 0.5% and 1.5% for a salary thats several tens of thousands below market.
Secondly, if we are talking about companies that will get more funding, that means that your ownership of the company will be diluted further.
So in laymans terms, if you get 1% of the company and that gets diluted to 0.66% after Series A/B/C funding, in order for you to reach your $1 million, the company would have to acquired for more than $150 million. And what are the chances of that?
Furthermore, dont forget that while youre giving up some tens of thousands of dollars a year(that you might make at market), your equity stake is vested over 4 years, so if you do decide to leave after a year, you would have given up two years worth of potential market salaries for half of the equity that has potentially no value.
So basically, its a gamble and hopefully people do their research before taking a leap into the startup world.
I never said it was a guarantee to make millions, just that I think over a programmer's career it is comparatively likely to make $5-50M working at a startup than starting your own, and you will be net happier on average by working at a startup than starting your own.
Also, many startups these days do pay market rates. Weebly certainly does. The startups that don't pay market are generally sub-10 people and you get an even higher equity grant for that.
Regardless, joining a startup is obviously a gamble and very far from a sure thing, but at the end of the day, so is starting your own startup.
As an employee at an early startup, you can still get significant upside exposure (eg make millions or tens of millions in a success scenario) while being able to "just code", have a much more normal work-life balance, and having much less exposure to risk.
If you're decently good at picking good startups to join, it is probably also an easier way to get seven-to-eight digits rich than starting your own company, since a lot of the risk is already removed.