Knowing that big company give me cash whereas small ones gives me equity and only on paper. Thoughts?
I would, why would you take on more risk for less money?
That’s not how that works. The equity you get has a potential to grow exponentially. That’s the risk vs. reward in startups. You don’t get paid more. You get paid less.
Yeah, and it has the potential to be worth 0.
Expect paper equity from startup to be from 20x (early stages) to 2x (pre-IPO) bigger to compensate for risk that it's not going fly. There are 6 months+ cooldown period even if you join 1 week before IPO. Stock can easily can go down during it.
You cannot expect to be paid the same way in a startup
I would move to a smaller company to 1) get greater responsibilities and experience in new areas that my current job doesn’t allow, or 2) work with an excellent new team in a promising new industry, or 3) get better work life balance by reducing commute/travel/hours etc. If none of the previous things are true, then don’t leave your current job just for the potential of startup equity turning into something substantial. You might not stay there long enough...
Depends on the startup but in general I wouldn’t expect a total comp bump