Was reading an article written about incentives by Steven Levitt( Freakonomics fame) . He says a lot of people enter very risky and sometimes even dangerous professions because they believe in making the same / equivalent money which the previous generation has made. Cockaine drug dealing profession is such a dangerous profession that foot soldiers have an annual death rate of 7% ( 0.5% is the annual death rate of people who fight Iraq war ). However the lure of making 400k per year ( who are at the top of the biz) lures them…Consider this, only 2000 people could make 500k+ in Goldman sachs in 2005. (source confidential) .

People enter startups with only esops as the carrot, precisely because they saw 90’s as the age of millionaires. They feel that by going through the same path , they would become millionaires. This thinking is flawed as the data analyzed by author shows that most of the people end up as meagre salary drawees / paupers…..!!