Early employees get to decide on a gamble: Do I want equity in return for probably less salary and do I want to get load of influence on the technology in retur

Early employees get to decide on a gamble: Do I want equity in return for probably less salary and do I want to get load of influence on the technology in return for a higher expectation that I can deliver it? A more general difficulty is that a good employee might not want to work for you because they don't know that they are a good fit and plenty of poor employees might say anything they can to convince you to hire them because they like the sound of a startup even though they cannot deliver what's needed. The missing part of recruitment (from personal experience!) is how to quantify what skills are needed in a startup (multiple hats, big picture, time commitment, understanding of the whole business, not just the tech, pragmatism in spades and the idea that growth is assumed and will need to be managed - ideally with early employees being the Managers) and how can the applicant 'prove' they can meet these?