[Don Plumley]

Frankly it's more about luck/timing than anything else. By the time the company really has something going, it's too late to have enough shares or a low enough strike price to generate meaningful wealth. So early on, it's an incredible cocktail of a great idea, great management, good investors and even then it's a 1:100 shot. Great ideas poorly executed die. Great execution of mediocre ideas die. Great ideas, well executed, but without sufficient investment die.

If you are in before professional money, you are probably working for little/no salary, just promise.

But for 1:100, if you were an early employee at eBay, Cisco, Netflix, et al, you could do very well. I have friends that were in those companies at very early stages and all did incredible.