[davidu]

Hey may agree to less than what he has today because by giving back a huge chunk of equity to the company it can allocate it to future hires. That way he is hopefully increasing the chances of his somewhat smaller stake being worth more later.

In other words, he'd be better off owning less of something huge than more of something small. :-)

This is not unheard of. It might not be common, but I've only been in silicon valley six years and I've seen it at least a handful of times.

[mistakes]

Thank you for the perspective. It makes sense.