Ostensibly, founders should have a lot of the equity because they took on a lot of the risk; often going months or years either without collecting pay or at lea

Ostensibly, founders should have a lot of the equity because they took on a lot of the risk; often going months or years either without collecting pay or at least below market pay for their skillset. I worked with a founder who spent 7 years, spent tens of thousands (if not over $100k) of his own savings, and took on loads of debt before he finally landed a $100m Series C last year. The execs and employees joining later are by nature taking less risk because they are being paid near market rates with equity making up the rest. The later employees get less of the pie because the early employees took all of the risk.