Founders do not pay for equity by foregoing salary. They earn equity by assuming the downside risks and opportunity costs of starting a company. A reduced salary might be part of that package of risks and costs, but it's surely not the only part.

If you want labor, you must pay for it.

You can't pay for it with lottery tickets, also known as equity. You can't pay for it with exposure. You can't pay for it with experience.

You can only pay with cold hard cash. The landlord only accepts little pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them. So if someone is going to work many hours a day, founder or otherwise, they need an absolute guarantee that they will receive many such pictures in exchange for that work.

Period.

And who are those founders supposed to consist of? Exclusively early-20 year olds living with their parents? Because my landlord sure as hell is not gonna accept 'equity' for rent. Neither does my grocery store or car financing company. Silly.

Most of us can't really afford to work the idealistic "Not in it for the money" career for long, and every startup has to rethink this mentality at some point in its life. It's better to be realistic early on instead of waiting for a crisis. Paying your founders doesn't mean your business will be fueled by greed. It just means that food and rent costs money.

That philosophy certainly shrinks the pool of potential founders.

Yea by like >90%

I don't know about anyone else, but I have bills to pay.

This whole "work for equity" line is just another example of the common "work for exposure" you see in the creative fields. It's just someone trying to get something for nothing. I wish it would stop.