Fair enough. There's no clear-cut answer which is better. You're painting vesting in more darker light than I assume it's but you made your point across. =) If

Fair enough. There's no clear-cut answer which is better. You're painting vesting in more darker light than I assume it's but you made your point across. =) If the founders and investors want to screw you over I'm sure they can and will do so, nothing much you can do with that. If they're concerned with their employee happiness I doubt they'd do it just for pure greed. However as you said the lottery-ticket will probably keep the best employees around much longer than they'd otherwise so it's probably not all bad? Not everything can be valued by its monetary value only. And also I'd argue that the hottest start-ups aren't for sale in stock markets or at least they are already highly priced when they enter them. It's a lottery-ticket for sure but as with all companies you can never be 100% sure how they're going to end up.