But serioslly when IPOs were not a sad joke? In early 1990s? But I think never.

In my ~20 year career half of which were well funded startups I made it to one IPO (multiple sole proprietor sales) with a bigcorp and my prize was having 3 years to buy my stock options at the IPO day strike-price, which was higher than the stock ever was in my last 2-3 years there.

In the end I made my million(th) sitting behind a cubicle collecting 401k which none of those startups gave me.