So, they want your help now, for some slice of theoretical profits at some future date, at which point they might be profitable. Further, they're not splittin

So, they want your help now, for some slice of theoretical profits at some future date, at which point they might be profitable. Further, they're not splitting all the profits with everybody, but just 1/5th of them, and you would get 1/9th of that even though you'd be %25 of the workforce. Meaning they keep %80 of the profits and all the equity. You'd be better off going into competition with them. I'm sure you can find an engineer like the one engineer they have and split the equity 50/50. Or find an engineer and one of whatever-it-is the other 2 co-founders bring to the table. This is not a promising startup if this is the kind of deal they are offering... because they won't be able to get good people. If you want employees who aren't getting big chunks of equity, then you need to pay them a market salary. You're giving up market salary and getting a vague promise of a fraction of a theoretical future profits.