What role do you want these early stage employees to have? If you hide everything, that is consistent with having an unprivileged role at a risky enterprise wh

What role do you want these early stage employees to have? If you hide everything, that is consistent with having an unprivileged role at a risky enterprise where the employee should justly assume the worst - e.g. that the only compensation that is real is one that is cash-in-pocket, and that the job can end at any moment, as the company might be dead in the water, out of the runway already. That's not necessarily an obstacle, but that requires paying some premium (in cash, not equity) to justify these risks. If you're open and trust the employees with realistic financial information, then the employees can trust the future of the company, to the extent that the information actually supports the notion that the future is there and not faked for pure PR.