That's how most companies work. The risk diminishes as the company becomes more established and recruiting becomes easier. Houston wrote the prototype himself a

That's how most companies work. The risk diminishes as the company becomes more established and recruiting becomes easier. Houston wrote the prototype himself and became accepted to Y-Combinator on that platform. Before attending he met Ferdowsi and they went through Y-Combinator and iterated on the design and built a great product, they made the viral Digg video and released to a waitlist of +75,000. Before another employee was hired YC was in the cap table and 7 participants had funded in the seed stage (included sequoia). I am not sure if the group dynamic functions as peers, in that decisions and features and such are developed by discussion and there is mutual respect. However, I think Houston and Ferdowsi are more responsible for DB success than others and thus have a bigger slice of the Cap table.