What you misunderstood was that this article was simply about the math of trading equity, not higher level issues like one's personal goals, which I talk about elsewhere.
Incidentally, your specific claim that if you take VC money "you're not getting anything until the company is worth at least 10X" is false. Many VCs, including Sequoia, will let founders sell some of their stock on the way up for diversification. Such deals are usually kept quiet, but they're quite common.
Trading equity only makes sense in terms of my goals. The founders own 90% of this company. We're not trading equity unless the math makes sense. If your math says it makes sense when it doesn't, your math is wrong (specifically, money has nonlinear utility for founders, but linear utility for VCs, or more specifically, for limited VC partners).
"Many VCs, including Sequoia, will let founders sell some of their stock on the way up"
How very generous of them. They may deign to "let" you sell some of your stock. Come hither dumb hacker, trade that unencumbered stock for paper you don't even have the right to sell. And just to prove how generous we are, we'll let you keep 70% of the paper no one is allowed to sell (of course, we reserve the right to do whatever we please with our 30%).
Be in no doubt that they 0wn your ass, regardless of the percentage of your company they have. Hence why discussion of equity percentages makes no sense unless we're comparing the same class of stock.
Incidentally, your specific claim that if you take VC money "you're not getting anything until the company is worth at least 10X" is false. Many VCs, including Sequoia, will let founders sell some of their stock on the way up for diversification. Such deals are usually kept quiet, but they're quite common.