Yes, I was very lucky. I was actually one of the first few employees, and I joined about a year before they raised their series A. Now they are a unicorn, and hopefully on their way to an IPO.

I don't know if I would say I joined a "unicorn within unicorns". Every unicorn has at least 10 early employees with the same story, and according to this list [1], that's at least 1,850 people.

I don't think the company was QSBS-eligible. At least, I've never heard that acronym while reading through all of the paperwork. And yes, the shares were NSOs.

I don't really have an investment portfolio, apart from these shares. I've been working as a part-time freelancer while I try to build my own startup ideas, so I'm not really saving for retirement. The IPO should only be a few years away, so I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

If everything falls apart, I'll try a few more startup ideas. If those fail, my backup plan is to spend 4 years working full-time, living frugally and saving as much money as possible, and then retiring in a country with a very low cost-of-living. I can save around $130k per year as a remote software engineer, and I only need $500k to retire comfortably.

[1] https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies