[hasker]

My thoughts exactly. Well connected people essentially raise money on no-cap convertible notes in their seed round at a sum of a few million dollars with no product yet. That means their VCs and angels want in so badly that they essentially give free money to get preference for the series A in a pay to play sort of situation. The founders may be stingy on equity, but they do not have a problem paying at or above market salaries. Also, I would be very skeptical of any CTO that has not worked as an engineer at some point.