A company I built went from making 1-2 million a year for eight years to 30k this year. I'm letting the company fold. I'm afraid to become an employee for someone else and let the founders profit off my ideas while I get a pat on the back. Sadness.
3 answers from the community
Wait wait wait. If you made that much money over that period of time you wouldn't NEED to work for anyone. You'd be retired.
The company made lots of money. The founders didn't necessarily make money.
To OP : You have other options. You can contact your network to see if there are other startups around looking for rockstar cofounders. You'll get some real equity, you just won't be the CEO. That's something I could live with.
If the company had million+ revenue (or maybe profit??) then it must have potential still. The question is why has it dropped so significantly, and would it be possible to recover? Maybe you could sell - your past results show there is potential for the right buyer, of course your sale value is diminished by your currently performance.
Looks like selling earlier (at plateau rather than decline) might have been the better option here. Too late for you but maybe a reminder for others.