Here’s a nice list of internet purchases over the past few years. I’m starting to come to grips with the fact that even if you create a great company the payout is not that spectacular unless it’s the one in a hundred deal like a YouTube, Skype, Broadcast.com, etc. As one of the VC’s down at Mashup Camp pointed out those are the exceptional exceptions to the normal rule of deals worth millions, not billions. Even in those deals only a handful of people make more than a few million.

In a 20 million deal once you’ve paid off the VCs and generously dealt with other key employees I wonder what the average “founder payout” would be?   The average VC funded buyout is about 47 million.   This sounds high, but there are many, many VC fundings that end up dying.    Thus the ‘average value’ of a VC funded company would be way below the average buyout price if I read that number correctly.
As my old pal Rick likes to say “A million dollars isn’t what it used to be!”