I see basically two kinds of equity compensation. The first is "what the founders have, but less of it." It's very difficult for the founders to make a boatloa

I see basically two kinds of equity compensation. The first is "what the founders have, but less of it." It's very difficult for the founders to make a boatload of money off the company without also compensating you. These have some sort of value - if the founders want to make $10MM off it, you're getting something like $100K. The second is everything else. There's an obvious incentive to screw over the "founders don't have this" class of equity, so I value these at zero. This includes the vast majority of stock options.