It is true that most early startup employee will not become financially independent if/when the startup sells.
However, if you take away this dream, I suspect a lot of non-founding, startup employees would not risk leaving a stable job to work at a startup. They know they're too risk adverse to startup their own company, they're not interested in being mentored or eventually funded, and they prefer stability over excitement.
What leads them to working at a startup is the promise of making it big someday, maybe they know people who have done it. Or read about it.
I'm not really judging this, but more so just pointing out what I've seen. I am not recommending that you, as a founder, lie or deceive them,. However, the truth is that if you take away their hopes and dreams (and people can be very imaginative), you'll have a much smaller talent pool to choose from.
We actually tell people this, and work through a few example exits to educate them on what it would mean for them financially. Then we tell them that we'll have a great time working with unbelievably excellent people on a supremely meaningful problem, that they get a better education in how startups work that anywhere else, and that they'll actually be paid pretty well for it. And then we tell them that big companies are impersonal, and routinely fire great contributors for stupid reasons, and that if we go out of business the founding team will personally work our utmost to find our employees good jobs.
It does convince people, most of the time. More importantly I think I sets the right tone for our relationship going forward. This is not a big company. Startups are a family.
That's great to hear, and it sounds like that's helping build a strong, honest culture.
What bothers me are when I see good, capable people who stay with a sinking ship only because they're holding onto hope. I feel like some startups exploit that hope in a negative way. I don't know how often this happens, but I have seen it a couple times.
However, if you take away this dream, I suspect a lot of non-founding, startup employees would not risk leaving a stable job to work at a startup. They know they're too risk adverse to startup their own company, they're not interested in being mentored or eventually funded, and they prefer stability over excitement.
What leads them to working at a startup is the promise of making it big someday, maybe they know people who have done it. Or read about it.
I'm not really judging this, but more so just pointing out what I've seen. I am not recommending that you, as a founder, lie or deceive them,. However, the truth is that if you take away their hopes and dreams (and people can be very imaginative), you'll have a much smaller talent pool to choose from.