“The part about these stories that feels unfair is not that the founders are getting liquidity - it’s that they are the only ones getting liquidity.”
Founders justify holding 1000x the equity of employee #15 with the risk they took. Then they sell shares in the Series A and B while employees stay locked in. In one real case the founder took $400,000 at the A and $750,000 at the B, and only people on the cap table ever knew. Adam Neumann pulled over $2 billion out of WeWork, and his employees got nothing. The founder is all-in right up until the board offers a check.