[rojobuffalo]

Maybe there is an imbalance of risk taken or value added among founders and early employees. I think that's debatable, but assume it's true. It's never reasonably accounted for in the equity distribution.

It would be one thing for a founder to have 3x the equity of an early hire, but it is commonly more like 60x or 300x. Instead of a dozen people being able to cash out and support their families for the rest of their lives, one or maybe two people get to have many multiples of that and the rest barely make progress towards retirement.

[overrun11]

I agree 100%. Also, I don't see a substantial difference in risk between a founder and an early employee at all. Founders typically have little invested in the startup other than their own time but they compensate for that by paying themselves a salary with investor money.

[CallMeJim]

It sounds like you're saying that early employees and founders have a similar level of rush, but vastly different levels of reward.

Why would anyone ever be an early employee when they can be a founder instead?

[overrun11]

All things equal I don't think they should. The reality is probably a combination of early employees not being as skilled as the founders and behaving irrationally/ not understanding the value of their equity.

[ivalm]

Access to capital