| "Employees may not always be aware of the risks, but they are exposed to them." Everyone is exposed to risks. Jobs are never a sure thing in the first place and being a first employee or an employee at a newly funded startup is always going to have some risk. If you aren't willing to take on the risk that comes along with the job, you can work for a non-startup. Plenty of people do this. "But consider someone who has the ability to get hired as a senior SE at a place like google or netflix, who instead works at a startup for, say, $150k a year. That's still probably close to $75K in lost income a year, and I really do think I'm keeping these numbers conservative." An opportunity risk, maybe. However, if the person loses their job..they don't really lose that money. It's pretty unfair to put that responsibility on the employer and impossible to prove one way or the other (How are you going to prove an opportunity that will or will not happen??) You could also make that same argument for any company (not just a startup). If I work at a place making $75K, I could be potentially leaving money on the table because another unknown company might want to hire me for $100K. "1) they may be taking on vastly more risk than you have estimated through lost opportunities/salary/lack of job stability," Which really isn't taking on more risk in regards to the company, which is my point. We are all taking on risk with almost every decision we make. Nothing is a sure thing. "they may be entitled to more shares even at lower risk levels because their skills are very valuable (truth is, they may be more valuable than the founder in some cases)." They aren't entitled to anything and nearly all employees are expendable. How do I know? I was the valuable employee in many companies before I started my own. I, and everyone I ever worked with, could be replaced. Was it easy? Of course not. But the work in most companies isn't rocket science...and when it is, the company compensates the employee accordingly and tries to keep them there at all costs. Once again, shares in the company is directly proportional to risk. If as an employee, you are willing to take a paycheck directly related to the success of the company and, or take on debt when the everything crashes, they you have the leverage to get a higher percentage of the profits. The way I see it, you want a higher percentage of the profits for no more increase in risk, which doesn't really make sense. |