"Hence vesting." Your equity only acts as an incentive to stay as long as it looks like you have a chance of winning. Just like investors will eventually stop

"Hence vesting." Your equity only acts as an incentive to stay as long as it looks like you have a chance of winning. Just like investors will eventually stop throwing good money after bad if you don't meet your numbers, your Engineers will start looking for paying work. Getting good people who have other options to work for free for any period of time is no mean feat. Personally, I've gone the other direction; I hire inexperienced people and train, but that only works because I am experienced myself. (of course, I've never seriously tried to get VC, so I have no clue how difficult that is.) My point is just that as long as you have your Engineers, you can cover infrastructure with beer money (at least, until you get really huge.) which I guess was your point, too, what with saying the barrier to entry is low. I'm just saying; keeping a few really good engineers happy without money is not as easy as it sounds. And, it's not as hard as you think for Engineers to come up with money. I spent almost $60,000 on servers last year.