Oh, totally agreed 100%. I’m just saying that there is a way to value a time investment that is on par with what financial investors are buying into. It doesn’t need to be some hand-wavy idea of who’s ‘risking’ more due to the unknown chance the startup might fail, and it doesn’t need to speculate about who would be hurt worse. It can be a purely fair and financial idea for early devs; their stock compensation value is the discrepancy between what the startup pays and what their market rate is.
It’s up to the startup to put the offer to you, but up to you whether to take it.