The problem is there is very, very little equity given to early employees. I went to one of YC's "work at a startup" events and Sam Altman himself got on stage and called out basically every company there for this very issue (assuming I interpreted him correctly).
I looked into joining several startups as employee #1, both at this event, on AngelList, and by talking to random people who cold emailed me -- and it seems like an offer of 1% equity would be considered generous. I thought that seemed totally crazy and when I asked founders why they didn't offer more, they always said the same thing: "We have one slice for the founders, one slice for the investors, and one slice for every employee we are going to hire going forward, so we can't offer more than 1%."
If you're friends with the founders and they know you have the skills, and they trust you to work hard, you could get something like 5-10% as employee #1. That's really the only sort of deal you should consider. But if you're just some random dude with a decent resume, you're way better off taking a more traditional job at an established company where your compensation is relatively predictable.
I looked into joining several startups as employee #1, both at this event, on AngelList, and by talking to random people who cold emailed me -- and it seems like an offer of 1% equity would be considered generous. I thought that seemed totally crazy and when I asked founders why they didn't offer more, they always said the same thing: "We have one slice for the founders, one slice for the investors, and one slice for every employee we are going to hire going forward, so we can't offer more than 1%."
If you're friends with the founders and they know you have the skills, and they trust you to work hard, you could get something like 5-10% as employee #1. That's really the only sort of deal you should consider. But if you're just some random dude with a decent resume, you're way better off taking a more traditional job at an established company where your compensation is relatively predictable.