I've always worked at startups, probably a dozen in total so far. I was usually the only technical person in the company (or one of very few), with typically less than 10-20 employees total. Was always paid well and enjoyed what I did, but I understand that might not be typical. Usually the company would eventually get sold off or just go out of business and then I would move on to something else.

When one of the companies got bought out and surged from ~20 to 100+ employees, it wasn't long before I and most others slowly left one after another because the new owners didn't know anything about technology and ran everything into the ground, blowing through ~100 million dollars with nothing to show for it (we did more previously with 5 million than they ever did with 100).