I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early employees. A few years ago, Zynga told some early employees with lots of shares t

I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early employees. A few years ago, Zynga told some early employees with lots of shares that they had to give back some of their stock or they'd be fired: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-emplo... http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-scandal/ http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-scanda... I'm not sure if that qualifies as "regret", or if it's just greed, but it's one very public example of a company deciding they've given too many options to early employees.