I'm actually surprised you're making this mistake -- you've pulled out once a generation companies and are generalizing from there. With these select companies, all the early employees get rich; this is totally true. But again, these come along once every 5 years at best. So what? It's still lottery tickets.
Hell, I remember reading (and I wish I'd saved the source) that the US makes roughly 5 billion dollar companies per year. And even at a billion dollar company the first 100 employees won't be rich (where rich is > $1mm after taxes after vcs take their share). So your statistics are just wildly delusional. And remember, $1mm these days isn't even buy a modest house in the peninsula money.
Now of course, live well within your means has been good advice since, well, forever.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound
ought and six, result misery.
I've worked for many of those companys, Intel -> Sun -> { startups } -> NetApp -> Google -> {startup}. I find it hard to call them 'once a generation' as I've seen several in my singular generation.
That said, from the ones I worked at, the first 100 employees of every tech company (and that is important as Tech companies give out lots of equity, others do not) that hit a billion dollar + valuation have made at least a million dollars from their participation. Most multiple millions. That has simply been my experience, and I completely agree its just a data point. It would be fun to have someone with more time to dig to make up that list of 100 of every tech company that is worth more than a billion dollars and check the millionaire/not millionare box. I'd love to see the chart.
Hell, I remember reading (and I wish I'd saved the source) that the US makes roughly 5 billion dollar companies per year. And even at a billion dollar company the first 100 employees won't be rich (where rich is > $1mm after taxes after vcs take their share). So your statistics are just wildly delusional. And remember, $1mm these days isn't even buy a modest house in the peninsula money.
Now of course, live well within your means has been good advice since, well, forever.
Just as true as when Dickens wrote it in 1850.