Your goal shouldnt be to work at at an early startup. As you mentioned it's not worth it.
Your goal is to be a founder at a startup, and for all of people's claims that startup success is entirely luck that is not true.
Luck certainly plays a role, hell being in the position to choose between being a founder vs employee of someone else startup requires incredible luck, on a global scale.
But, me and you, the privileged 0.1% of the world, are masters of our destiny. To claim otherwise is to accept mediocrity as inevitable and not the consequences of our decisions.