[Hermitian909]

> you’re asking someone to give you 10x or more the shares of what they have reason to think their next-best alternative is.

I don't think this is an accurate representation of my views. I'm happy to take more in the 2-3x range so long as I'm protected from the founders cashing out while screwing me out of my paper gains.

> there are plenty of other capable engineers out there who are willing to take a lower stake for a variety of reasons.

Maybe, but they can't always find them! Businesses rarely fail for one reason but maybe 1/3 of the startups that approached me and failed were bogged down by poor technical decisions made early on (what's that? your engineering lead with 3 years of experience set up a totally custom kubernetes cluster and it's slowing down your execution? Man that's rough!)