Anthropic is an interesting company. The salary band there is really high. Engineers starting at $300k
Holding the fund is not like typical investing, as hedge funds are meant to be long-term holds, with limited exit periods (quarterly) and distributions (no more than a percentage of the overall) from the fund.
Most the explosive growth in startups happen before they IPO, but traditional investors have been shut out from it until recently, due to the SEC believing it gives average investors too big of a noose to hang themselves with.
Like any investment (or anything in life) you should only commit what you're comfortable seeing disappear, but bigger risk exposure means the potential for bigger gain. Imagine the folks starting up all these ventures, if they fail they're left with nothing, in many cases.
As for their hiring: I think they really want only the cream of the crop. The top performers that can make maximum impact on their product.
Every company wants the cream of the crop! Likely they have a lot of $$$, which is good.
I tend to think the diversity of the fund is more of a strong point. Trying to pick only winners is tough, but picking a variety of those that look most likely to succeed in the space is much more likely to yield overall good returns.