You could argue that the best pay for themselves, and that running out of a cash could come from hiring bad people. The absolutely best employees I've seen hav

You could argue that the best pay for themselves, and that running out of a cash could come from hiring bad people. The absolutely best employees I've seen haven't been frequent job hoppers. At most it's every 3-5 years. I'm thinking of an unscientific sample size of 5 or 6 people who have had sustained outstanding technical performance of 10-25 years. Companies don't let people like them go. And they tend to be loyal to the mission if treated fairly. Now a company with $1mm of seed money that's supposed to last 12-18 months can't afford to hire 5 people like that. There's not enough cash or equity to go around.