The author makes an interesting point about equity as lottery tickets.<p><i>&quot;They call stock options a lottery ticket. I call it insurance. It sucks to have worked at a startup which did make it big and to not have made anything off it. Incidentally, I know quite a lot of people who either forfeited their stock options or sold them very cheaply, on the theory that equity is worthless. Trust me, if you&#x27;re working for a startup, this is the one accident you want to be insured against.&quot;</i><p>Calling it &quot;insurance&quot; is probably taking it too far, but there is merit to this analogy, and it certainly is the case that equity is not worthless.  With many startups, you can negotiate a decent base salary, and still receive enough equity to make you very well of if the company does take off.