Keep in mind the fact that lots of high level employees play the role of mentor on the side for other start ups, and at the same time, many high level employees

Keep in mind the fact that lots of high level employees play the role of mentor on the side for other start ups, and at the same time, many high level employees are individuals who have started their own successful ventures at one time or another, and now prefer to work for someone else for various reasons. These two roles are far from mutually exclusive. I also never stated anywhere that it would be acceptable for a mentor to haggle about his equity stake. ~0.5% is a rough estimate of what most mentors receive in exchange for their advice and help. Frankly, you're right that most mentors do it out of a desire to help and their equity position should be just enough to have some skin in the game. However, those mentors also have a responsibility to help you. That help comes in many different sizes and shapes. My point was that some of the things a mentor does to help is to make connections that can take lots of time to otherwise make, and to help overcome hurdles that otherwise would likely prevent success. As far as their role, if you need a mentor to tell you that you suck at XYZ, you're probably not ready to run your own company yet. A great founder knows his weaknesses and surrounds himself with people who fill those gaps and raise the bar for the entire team. Sure, there are inexperienced founders who need to be told this, but if that's the mentor's main job then that start up is going to have bigger problems than the equity stake of the mentor vs a high level employee. I think you might've misunderstood my point. I wasn't saying that $100K will buy you someone who can do what a mentor can do. I was saying that a mentor can help do many of the things that a $100K employee would otherwise need to do, at a fraction of the cost and much more efficiently. This is of course dependent on a founder making a prudent choice of mentor(s), which if he was the type of founder described above, he will have done.