I said this thing in response to Game Development crunch, which also applies to startups. The original creators of the company, now people in charge, have equit

I said this thing in response to Game Development crunch, which also applies to startups. The original creators of the company, now people in charge, have equity and that is a big reason they worked so hard to grow the company from nothing into what it is today. Therefore when they ask (or subconciously demand through company culture) to crunch or work overtime they should give out equity as an extra part of the compensation for working extra hours. Part of this is to align the founders' and employees motivations so they're more in sync, as both parties now have some form of upside to work hard and see the company grow. Another part of this is to make the shareholders and founders really think about the culture and how they expect other people to work. So if they want a culture that is about putting in many hours and effort then they should be prepared to lose a little bit of ownership to make that happen. If they're not comfortable with that then they this will act as a disincentive for them, so they fix the culture and their expectations and people can have a normal work schedule. One final note is that with whatever system there will be people that end up exploiting it, and as ever that's a people management problem. Hopefully with a trustworthy culture this will not happen.