there are couple misconceptions here 99% of startups don't solve hard problems (it seem hard to them because they are inexperienced and excited but in all real

there are couple misconceptions here 99% of startups don't solve hard problems (it seem hard to them because they are inexperienced and excited but in all reality not so challenging ) , that doesn't mean they don't have good business idea but technical aspect is mostly easy , challenges usually come with scale which happens later financial upside for 0.2% equity end 100Mil exit is --> 200000 at best and that is not much so where is that upside for somebody taking 80K instead 140k over 4 years ? Not to mention that probability of that happening is low to start with in small startup it would be essential to have extremely qualified people , excitement should be secondary I do what I do because I love it but that doesn't mean I have to do that for free or cheap so correlation between asking for fair price and not being excited (passionate) about what you do is mostly not there I worked in couple of startups (last one had exit 500Mil) but I was paid market rate and that is mostly a reason why they succeeded (got high quality people knowing exactly what they are doing)