Sorry, I mistook your earlier statement to believe that you thought equity is worthless, when you were just saying there is no cash value for equity.
And yes, you're correct, the equity should be setup in a way that offers early hires significant upside.
Curious, did your founders use a flat %, or did they figure out some weighted amount?
I am engineer #1 at a startup right now. The equity was very generous and weighted appropriately vs cash.