[gaius]

He's done very well for an employee #1 (vs a founder).

Reminds me of a "startup" I worked for in the dotcom boom. I was good friends with employee #1, he brought me on board as something like employee #30. When we IPO'd the founders made hundreds of millions (which they subsequently lost all of in the dotcom crash lol). But we were talking and his equity package was basically the same as mine - we both made between 6 months and a year's salary in the IPO - a nice chunk of change to be sure, but my friend had worked just as hard as any of the founders and made sacrifices in terms of the comfortable corporate job he could have had... This is a story repeated time and time again. It very, very rarely makes sense to be an early employee. Be a founder, or come on board later.