You don't have to be one of the 10 first employees at Facebook to get paid: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072204/Facebook-IPO-create-1-000-millionair

You don't have to be one of the 10 first employees at Facebook to get paid: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072204/Facebook-IPO-create-1-000-millionaires-companys-rank-file.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072204/Facebook-IPO... As a general rule of thumb, if a company is willing to do the extremely expensive action of acquihiring, they are willing to part a pretty high amount of equity of employees. Not acquihire-high of course, but a pretty good amount. Of course, it could be argued that they aren't "startups" by that point, but "growth companies."