Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.
Maybe that's not widely agreed, though. I saw an ad on the "Who's Hiring?" post this month looking for a first engineer with a broad and deep skill set and big responsibilities offering 0.2% equity... Essentially no motivation to move heaven and earth to make the company succeed. Shrugs.
Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success
Yes because they have a hope for a larger reward later.....
The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.
Them not so much.
For instance Marco Arment was the first engineer at Tumblr. The exit was for $1 billion. He is rumored to have received less than $6 million.
I got an offer recently to be a first engineer where two founders (non-technical guys) would ask me to solve some major problems but could not offer competitive salary and absolutely refused any stake in the company when asked. So no technical knowledge and no common business sense.
