[albacur]

Startups do have advantages: they can give early employees a bigger piece of the equity pie than FAANG ever could, and provide a gamble on becoming much wealthier than employees could become working at FAANG. They can also give employees more overall product impact, more autonomy, and better growth opportunities.

If you, as a founder, don’t want to give up equity, who’s fault is that? You’re expecting employees to work for a pittance of what they can make elsewhere and take on the risk without upside.

If employees are look at your business and decide the probability of their equity being worth anything is too low, who’s fault is that? You’re trying to dupe them into taking a bad deal, or failing to communicate the opportunity.

If your company cannot scale to provide market-rate salaries, whose fault is that? You’re expecting your employees to give up their salaries and their financial security to subsidize a non-competitive lifestyle business that suits you, not them. You’d better figure out some incentive where that equation makes sense.