Funny because I’ve worked on and off in Tech Startups since the 90s and what I’ve seen is the very opposite of your statement: post year 2000 Crash Tech has become more the Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance (i.e. no-rules hyperspeculative) and that has been reflected on how most of the Founders and Investors are people with backgrounds in areas heavy towards Sales practices (i.e. Finance, Marketing, actual Sales people and, more in general Grifters) and very few have backgrounds in actually making things.
The Techie with an Engineering background coming up with a new Technology or twist on Technology and making a successful company out of it that was common in Tech boom of the 90s has been replaced by money-men and those whose main skillset is to find and keep investors (so, those good in spinning a good tale, not making something that actually works).
If engineers have become more equity seeking, that’s because of the truly insane amount of situations over the last decade or two of people working their asses of to make a company big expecting to win big via options they got and when the company does get big the founders and investors do some kind of financial swindling to make those options worthless and the more those founders and investors are grifters and similar, the more it happens.
People demand equity because the rules around it are a lot more tight than the rules around options which are a total joke and hence those who get options as motivation often end up with nothing when the company does make it big.
Funny because I’ve worked on and off in Tech Startups since the 90s and what I’ve seen is the very opposite of your statement: post year 2000 Crash Tech has become more the Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance (i.e. no-rules hyperspeculative) and that has been reflected on how most of the Founders and Investors are people with backgrounds in areas heavy towards Sales practices (i.e. Finance, Marketing, actual Sales people and, more in general Grifters) and very few have backgrounds in actually making things.
The Techie with an Engineering background coming up with a new Technology or twist on Technology and making a successful company out of it that was common in Tech boom of the 90s has been replaced by money-men and those whose main skillset is to find and keep investors (so, those good in spinning a good tale, not making something that actually works).
If engineers have become more equity seeking, that’s because of the truly insane amount of situations over the last decade or two of people working their asses of to make a company big expecting to win big via options they got and when the company does get big the founders and investors do some kind of financial swindling to make those options worthless and the more those founders and investors are grifters and similar, the more it happens.
People demand equity because the rules around it are a lot more tight than the rules around options which are a total joke and hence those who get options as motivation often end up with nothing when the company does make it big.