Before coming to this site I never realized how shafted employee number 1 gets at most startups. I've worked with the same CTO as employee #1 at various startu

Before coming to this site I never realized how shafted employee number 1 gets at most startups. I've worked with the same CTO as employee #1 at various startups for the last ~10 years. I generally get around 5%. The idea that people would take 1% or less sounds crazy to me. It's just not worth the hours and stress it involves that early on. In return I earn about 33-50% less salary than what I probably could elsewhere. So far it's paid off for me. But if I got less than 1% instead I would be worse off for it.