I could definitely do this if the startup job could pay me full salary. Alas, I'm in New York and would not leave the city lightly: family and friends. It'd have to be a dream job for me to consider moving, and with the rocky career I've had I don't even think dream jobs are available (or maybe it's just that I feel like a failure because I'm near 30 and haven't broken out yet).

My appraisal of startup vs. big-company life is that startups have more variation in individual monetary payoff, while big companies have more variance in quality of work. At a startup, you get a mix of interesting work and shitty grunt work that has to be done, and there's nothing personal about it because everyone is getting about the same quality of work, and because doing the grunt work is well worth it if the startup pays off. In a big company, you can end up in an AI/machine learning research group with high autonomy... or you can end up maintaining some shitty legacy payroll system.

But yes, I would consider a job at another startup. Or at a big company. Or at my current company if I knew the situation would improve. I don't want to be a "job hopper" and would love to find a job where it's still worth it to show up for work after 5 years.