[sokoloff]

I'm not following your second point. They could offer you the same salary and a bag of potato chips that would vest in 4 years and it still wouldn't be less than your current salary, right?

To your first point, the most conservative advice is to value the equity at zero, particularly if you believe there is a 5 year product lifespan at most, but the modal outcome for equity grants at startups is zero.

I've been at 4 companies that had exits to the public markets. In two of those, I got essentially nothing (but a job offer). In the other two, one was an acquisition by an already public company and the other went IPO. Both of the latter exits were nice, but at employee 41, nothing will be lifestyle-altering.