[kybernetyk]

It would be interesting to know how they pitched the jobs to their future employees? If someone came to me saying "Hey dude, work for free and you get 5% stake in a photo sharing app for the iPhone. It's cool app. We have filters!" I'd show him the door.

So there must have been some "we know people at $comp and they will buy us out"-talk to convince people to work for free.

[logicallee]

I'd be interested in knowing where you're located. Not quite for "free" but including a very low salary what you've just derided seems like a fairly standard startup pitch...