[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.