All startup hype aside, actually getting paid kinda matters.

The short line of highly visible, massive startup successes is vastly overwhelmed by the long, long, long line of Founders (and their staff) who racked up all kinds of debt with nothing to show for it. That's the part of the story no one likes to talk about — actually getting paid.

Building a startup is synonymous with deferred compensation and equity fortunes, but it masks a very real truth which is very few of those paper fortunes every become liquid. As Founders, while we benefit from amassing those paper fortunes, we need to be entirely focused on the real paper — getting paid with cash money.

Watching Monopoly Money Millionaires

It's so easy to get caught up in the value of "...