You are thinking small and that’s fine. It is wonderful to bootstrap an app and make income. However some ideas are much larger and need a big team and years of effort before the big payoff.
Venture capital as an aggregate investment class might only generate returns in the 10% range, but no VC would invest in an individual deal with such a low expected return. For early stage A-round deals they're targeting something like a 1000% return, and then those targets decline somewhat for later rounds.
How does it suck for employees? They still get paid. Any stock options or grants are essentially a lottery ticket. Anyone taking a job offer expecting to get rich on that basis is a fool.
Private companies usually pay less in tech in cash than public companies cash+RSUs. Even in the current brutal stock market environment, at least your RSUs are guaranteed to be worth something and you can diversify when you vest.
I didn't downvote, but I'm fairly certain the downvotes come from the "you're thinking small" part - it comes across as condescending, even if it wasn't meant that way. If the parent chopped off the first sentence it would dramatically change the perceived tone toward a neutral to positive one. That is, the first sentence is largely unnecessary (it adds nothing other than the risk of people taking it quite negatively).
Like so:
It is wonderful to bootstrap an app and make income. However some ideas are much larger and need a big team and years of effort before the big payoff.
