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I think your starting point is already flawed. Scale is needed for high value liquidity events which is needed for ROI to investors and employees compensated with equity.

If you realign the goal to return maximum value to your employees as soon as possible, then you can align incentives to maximize the creation and growth of markets to sustainably capture value and give it to the people that made it possible.

So just don't take VC money and build a company to give back to your employees as much as possible as soon as possible and do it without competing directly in any existing market or trying to take existing market share. Sounds tough.