Tech Startup vs Established Tech vs Finance

Hey guys - could really use some insights and opinions here. I'm currently looking at 3 drastically different career options & having a hard time trying to decide which is the best choice forward...

(1) Equity sales/research at a regional bank (unlikely anyone outside this part of the world would have heard of). Pay is obviously lesser than bulge, but once you hit VP level believe all in would still be at least 180k usd. Enough to live comfortably but just uncertain of exit ops and all that.

(2) Tech firm - think dropbox/wework/airbnb/uber/netflix -ish firms. Equity given but obviously these firms unlikely to grow 100x or even 10x so equity wont even be significant in the grander scheme of things. Still startup culture - lots of autonomy, ability to drive strategy change and the likes. Also kind of uncertain in exit ops.

(3) Its a start-up you've not heard of YET. & I say this with confidence because the founder is someone whose name I guarantee you'll know about, who will never need to raise a single $ in vc money to make this succeed, and is determined to bring this startup global asap. I'm sure you'll hear of it within the next 2 years. The problem is I come in at a rather junior position, and they've said that they've no real need for anyone my level at the moment. They are still interested in keeping me around (fulltime), but want to do so on a more adhoc basis until say a couple of months later. This means no guarantee that it'll even happen, and no guarantee that I'll even get equity if it even happens. Also coming in that junior i'm quite uncertain if the equity will even be life-changing in future. Obviously this would be pretty exciting work given how new it is, but I'm also afraid they will continuously hire people above me, rather than allowing me to take on bigger roles.

Given these roles are so different - really no idea how to decide on any of these. Money is important in the longer term, but realistically i'm not expecting to become a billionaire. I just feel that (2) and (3) gives me the optionality and will set me up to apply for a M7 MBA in 2-3 years if I do want to reset my career (to go back to finance for eg), whereas in (2) is unlikely that I will gain admission to even a Top15 MBA. Of course, there's also the possibility to spend a few years in (1) before moving to a small fund, bigger bank, etc, but just cannot see how that will work out for now.

Any advice is welcome please, and please let me know which you would prefer if you were in this situation.
Thanks!

 

Hey eclipsed, I'm the WSO Monkey Bot and I'm here since nobody responded to your thread! Bummer...could just be time of day or unlucky (or the question/topci is too vague or too specific). Maybe one of these topics will help:

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Or maybe the following users have something to say: Shreshtha-Gupta Black Knight BananaMans

Hope that helps.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

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