Wait, your 11 month old company with a handful of employees was valued at a billion?
I don't think it's an ordinary path. The founder had success before, and the company I was a part of skipped seed and started with a series A before raising more pretty quickly.
edit:
From the looks of it, they have 500+ employees now.
Yes and no? I was certainly brought on as a valuable asset to the company.
I was introduced to the founder via a mutual acquaintance. I had other job offers at the time and had no intentions of joining, but the acquaintance asked me to speak with the founder and hear him out. I was basically tossed an offer that was silly to refuse.
I provided a lot of value and was responsible for building the most successful product the company offered.
I think things went a bit south when they wanted to raise even more money and bring in more investors. I think I was a bit of a black sheep in the company (I didn't have the phd+company pedigree as the other founding members). I felt like maybe I didn't look so good when they presented to investors. They certainly pitched the company as being built by the elites of AI and machine learning... and yet there I was ;p