[MuppetMaster42]

I agree wholeheartedly with your last point.

At my last company they had no equity going in, and added it on Jan 1st a year later. When I spoke to the founders about raises for the engineering team, the CTO looked at me funny.

"we just gave everyone stock options, why do they need a raise?"

Why?

Because a few of the engineers had young kids that were just starting school, and equity on a 1 year cliff won't pay those fees.

Because in Sydney there are enough start-ups that any one of the engineers could get an offer for 10-50% more base salary with options on top.

The founders were genuinely great guys, but they couldn't see the wood for the trees.