If an early employee leaves, they don't get to participate in the kicker pool. Suppose it takes a company 10 years to have a significant liquidity event. In the timespan, it's very likely key employees join & leave and don't best a stake that would achieve financial independence. Shouldn't these employees also have access to the kicker pool? A relevant example here is Quora, where several very key engineers have left but (I'm assuming) wouldn't achieve financial independence in an IPO. Isn't this system a bit predicated on a high growth company that hopes to IPO within a few years? What might help is giving option/shareholders access to the kicker pool so long as they don't liquidate otherwise.