[3bproblem]

Yup and that's your prerogative, but practically speaking there are many people in the market who do put the expected value of their equity above $0, and they're going to present a retention risk if their total compensation inclusive of equity gets too low. Fwiw this problem exists for public companies too.

[scarface74]

And those people don’t know the statistics of how rare it is for any company “succeeding” well enough for their equity be meaningful, how long it takes a company to have an exit (on average 7 years) or how brutal the IPO market can be during a bear market.

The majority of employees at startups have never experienced a bear market.

[3bproblem]

I hear you, although for better or worse teams somewhat need to manage to their employees' expectations and perceptions as well as the statistics on startup survival and liquidity. There's also a wide spectrum for the probability of a profitable liquidity event based upon scale, market, stability, etc...