Perhaps...people are assessing this offer and deciding it doesn't, in fact, have strictly better expected value? The prevailing wisdom is that equity grants ha

Perhaps...people are assessing this offer and deciding it doesn't, in fact, have strictly better expected value? The prevailing wisdom is that equity grants have an expected value near zero. Once the prospective hire also factors in the common startup expectation that you sign over all your waking hours to the company, the surprisingly substantial value of benefits, and the added risk that the startup goes belly-up or can't make payroll regularly at some point, that offer of matching salary starts to look much less attractive. Not saying that your frustration isn't warranted, or that all of these factors necessarily pertain in your startup - just that there are entirely valid reasons why the person on the other end of the table might refuse. (After all, the thing that makes much of modern economics / commerce possible is that risk is subjective.)