[jaredstenquist]

Terrible idea, and based on the title of your blog, it's no surprise to me that you'd like all your equity in year one.

There are reasons for 3,4 or N year vesting - namely keeping employees invested in the business. If employees at a startup turned over every year, it simply wouldn't survive.

Salary is used to keep employees for a year. Salary and/or equity is used to keep employees for a meaningful period of time. There will always be the ones there to simply collect a paycheck, and likewise there will be ones who stick around for their 50,000 shares of equity without doing the math to realize their potential upside near 0.