So you’re not trying to maximize salary but care about equity? Not sure I understand. Equity at seed stage startups is like buying lottery tickets, with the main difference that even if the startup has a successful exit 5 years later, you are not likely to get much if you are a salaried employee. Say you get $100k salary and 1% of shares, which becomes 0.1% after dilution. Say the company is bought for $1B. You will get $1M. So the total you have made after 5 years would be $1.5M. If you were working at Facebook at $300k/year you would have earned the same amount. Only the chances of this happening at FB are close to 100%, while unicorns are called unicorns for a reason.