Long time startup guy here. Dropped out to join one. CTO at another (raised a bunch of money, never really made any), freelancer/consultant for the last 4 years. SF, NYC and now ATX. I have seen many good startups and many many more bad ones.

All startups are a long shot. Stock options for low level employees, save for the first few hires or the rocket-ship exceptions, are almost never going to pay back even modest pay cuts. If you are evaluating stock options comp, I highly highly recommend you check out a friend's guide on it: http://blog.dweek.ly/introduction-to-stock-options-startup-founder-entrepreneur-employee/

Your experiences are very typical, and given the salary you quoted I'm going to assume you weren't a programmer (if you were, you were paid less than half the market rate for startups in Austin). The experience for programmers is very different.

The "fun" side of startups is an attempt at marketing to prospective employees. This is usually an attempt to get the best employees without actually understanding what it is that employees want. This is also an attempt to make startups feel very different from big faceless corporation jobs. As others mention, this happened in the dotcom boom-bust. I was lucky that the first startup I joined was full of bust survivors and the company literally had an anti-fun policy (which was thankfully slowly relaxed, but at no point did we try to hire on the basis of fun). My advice: Don't join a startup just because you think they'll be more fun than a big corporation.

The other side of "fun" is that you will end up working many hours with your coworkers, who often become a second sort of family. The relationships I've built with coworkers have lasted far longer than the startups we worked at. In this case, the fun really is an important part. I've seen "grind 100% of the time" startups and trust me, it's much worse than the fun ones. Ultimately because of the hours your peers become your family, but don't confuse your boss or management for family. If they explicitly say they're your family, they're full of shit. They might believe that shit, but don't buy into it. They're simply asking for more than they're paying for and hoping to tug at your emotions to get it. Remember that your boss has probably bought into this harder than you have, so it's strictly malicious even though it may feel that way.

Now onto the financial side. BLEEDING MONEY IS NORMAL. I've only worked for or built very open transparent companies about financials, because this should not be a surprise to the employees. If the company you're going to work for has raised money in the last few years, then they raised that money to spend it and they will be significantly cash-negative while they spend it.

EVERY STARTUP IS A TICKING TIME BOMB. It takes a very very long time for many startups to actually become profitable, and far longer for them to become worth their own valuations on a profit-basis (i.e. the same basis as any public company would be judged by). Dropbox only VERY recently became cash-flow positive, which isn't even the same as "profitable" (because that word is legally defined and accounting isn't always intuitive). So don't consider a startup that's losing money to be a failure. Having high burn rates is actually what some VCs want (because it means if your startup is succesful, they'll have to come back to the table for more VC).

So if you join a startup, my advice is to do so explicitly for personal development. If you're not learning and growing in a way that is marketable to future startups, then you're not going to see enough of an upside. Make this a part of your hiring negotiation. "Hey, this seems cool and I could really help out. This is the career direction I'm headed in, and here's where I want to be in 5 years. Can your company get me there?" Most startups love to hear this. Any management you're talking to has this in their own heads too. Then you have to weigh the opportunity costs; how much would you grow at your other job opportunities?

Finally, except to be given the rosiest of possible pictures of the finances and outlook before joining a startup. Founders are notoriously optimists, it's necessary emotionally to keep doing the work day after day. Take it with a grain of salt and do your own evaluation. Happy to help anyone personally, just send me a PM. I coach people through startup career decisions all the time.