> if VC needs 500 investments to make a 15% return on average, you need 5000 years to get the sames returns as a line worker
This doesn't necessarily follow. A "line worker"'s downside risk is the opportunity cost they pay for working at a startup, which has a different distribution than the investor's downside risk (the whole investment). At the extreme end I'd argue that e.g. WeWork's investors came out of it worse than the employees.
The downside distribution is more punishing on the low end. For people who need to pay rent, buy food, and pay medical bills, a 90% probability of losing half your wages is generally not worth a 10% probability of making 7x your wages.
That's because the less money you have, the more valuable a dollar is.
Wages are recurring income. So when wages fall by 50% you need to value an annuity with half the cashflows as before. The PV of your wage income stream over some time horizon can then be compared with the one time gain.
Otherwise you are comparing a stock concept (wealth) with a flow concept (income)
Correct. Another vehicle to display your point may be to consider the serial startup executive, who leapfrogs from growth stage startup to startup every few years, collecting 0.5%-2% of each in the process. For people who want to make returns from their stakes in startups, that seems like a better idea than going the VC route because it's easier to get better information and better deals as an insider.
You can only make so much money from startups by gatekeeping how other people's money is invested. That skill does not an operator make. VCs with operating experience I think operate with a different toolset and underwriting criterion than lifers.
Investors lose only a small portion of their assets and most importantly they don't have to lose time. Whether 2% of my liquid assets is more valuable than 4 years of someone's life is debatable, but I can certainly say the loss of those 2% won't make any impact on my life, while that worker won't ever recover his 4 years.
This doesn't necessarily follow. A "line worker"'s downside risk is the opportunity cost they pay for working at a startup, which has a different distribution than the investor's downside risk (the whole investment). At the extreme end I'd argue that e.g. WeWork's investors came out of it worse than the employees.