> a founder selling at the Series D price of $210M, would make the same amount of money at exit as they would have if they’d sold for $38M after having only raised a seed round (...) Lifetimes of work and risk lie between a Seed round and a Series D round. And, despite increasing the value of the underlying business 7x, the dollars at exit for the founder remain roughly the same.
Even though the exit dollars might be the same, it's failing to see two important points:
a) founders taking money off the table in early rounds. Founders can sell part of their equity at their company just as a personal "cash out" strategy. 1password founders took their Series A mainly for this. b) the network capital gained at a Series D company is NOWHERE near at a Series A company. It's impossible to put a dollar amount to that, but it'd say your career will be completely different from a successful Series A or Series D company.