I was in my late 20's in that era. The riches were had by a small few. Most often one ended up with worthless stock options.

Dude, an ICQ clone just sold for $19 billion. Still plenty of riches to be had.

yep, in an era where there are tens of thousands of apps flooding the App Store, and millions of people competing with you in SEO

Yeah, no riches for me. It's easy to look back in retrospect and said "oh I had this opportunity" but at the time, it wasn't obvious.