It's not the same equity. Quality is not distributed equally among the sample set of companies. The great startups (as judged retroactively via returns -- e.g

It's not the same equity. Quality is not distributed equally among the sample set of companies. The great startups (as judged retroactively via returns -- e.g. Facebook and Google) often (but not always) can get multiple competitive offers from top-tier venture firms, so having some abstract theory about how you're going to only pay low prices significantly damages your opportunity to invest in the companies that are going to generate all the returns.