In fact, I remember reading that round A is the worse time for an employee to join a startup: the large grants are gone, but the business isn't derisked, so your lottery tickets still have shit ev.
Honestly, though - beyond just larger equity grants, I'd like to see companies have people get rewarded when the company does well... Through some kind of bonus (in equity or cash).
It seems like most companies either have bonuses that are pretty much an expected part of salary, or they have no bonus in any situation. I've only really been part of the latter, though.
It's a different level of hard work. And a different set of circumstances if the business fails.
Honestly as a society, we should be less focused on raising the mostly already-high ethical standards of busy founders and more on providing education and support to the next generation of startup founders and startup employees. Employees can bounce to any number of happy-to-have-them bigcos because those skills are almost as rare as those you need to be a founder.
If you're looking for a bottleneck, look in the mirror. There's always more that can be done to build the community. There's a huge hunger for tech skills, tech companies, tech products.
Courting investors does not build value. Building a product builds value.
Plenty of people can and do design products.
In the case of an acquihire, founders, unlike employees, often clear a decent chunk of money (say $.5-$1.5mm) plus get an interesting job. (I personally know of several such cases).
There is plenty of unethical behavior by founders, but most of it isn't discussed in public or on HN, but rather privately between peers.
If you're working at a startup and getting $125-150k, you're lucky. Many people work at startups for half of that or less, plus those lottery tickets.
So if you're good then you may consider moving to one of the bigger players for a substantial increase in pay.
