That's actually reasonable. If you're eating out of tins every night you might sell your upside for a pittance. However, there's still the question of why this

That's actually reasonable. If you're eating out of tins every night you might sell your upside for a pittance. However, there's still the question of why this particular thing should have that protection. You could well stretch this and say engineers with massive student loans are equally up against the wall, and should get paid a piece if the code they write turns out to be very profitable later on. They don't all get equity in the company.