[brianwawok]

> Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.)

Sorry, but no. Jobs are very easy for a good dev. You are taking no zero risk as engineer #1 at a startup if your pay is market rate.

> and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut down).

To who? I would hire the 3 failed startup guy any day over the 14 years at Microsoft guy.

> To sum it up, I would expect a #1 engineers equity to be at least half of a founders equity AND payed at near-market rate.

Haha. I mean I guess it's fair to expect that. Maybe someone would give it to you. To me, it sees like a very inflated value of self worth if you are wanting to take little to no risk but then reap MOST of the benefits of being a founder.

[lordCarbonFiber]

I mean "market rate" in terms of salary is 30 - 50% pay cut over total comp compared to working at an established company with RSUs and massive EoY bonuses. That coupled with the general resume risk means your first hire is leaving a lot on the table.

If you need the best, you're going to have to pony up equity since you just can't compete otherwise. The open secret however, is that for most startups, you really don't need the best. You don't need top quality to throw together a web backend and a mobile app and start growing a base; for those companies it makes no sense to dilute the massive payout for the founders by sharing anything with the code monkey actually delivering the app.