Comment by manigandham

My replies are regarding your statement that founders "deserve" less, especially the rather extreme quote of 10%. That's nowhere near viable considering the effort and risk involved, and why I suggested you try it and show us.

And if most startups fail, why is equity worth so much to employees? Who wants to be paid in worthless options? This is the other common fallacy I see. Startups can compete by offering cash and better benefits like work flexibility. Equity rarely moves the needle and doesn't suddenly make people better workers either, regardless of all the hype leadership blog posts about ownership.

Some people respond to the increased responsibility and will always work at startups. Some people always want the big corporate gig. Neither will change much based on equity. What startups are competing over are the mostly average workers in the middle that could be swayed with the right offer, but there's not really a global shortage, just with hype FAANG workers (who are no longer 0.01% quality or anywhere close). You can get great people anywhere and plenty of startups have figured that out.