Ask HN: What makes being an early employee of a startup worth it?

To me being an early employee seems to be all around a bad deal. But it is also a vitally important position for startups.

For example, lets say you join a startup as employee #2. You're granted 0.5% and make significantly less than a market salary. Now let's say this startup is pretty successful and exits for $50 million in 4 years. With that kind of exit the founders will likely never have to work again in their lives if they do not want to. You, however, will have made less than if you joined a more stable company.

Now people will say your impact is bigger or you get to work on something you're passionate about. But that is also true for the founders and they also get to make enough money to be financially independent.

Of course this also ignores the more common case which is that the startup just fails. And in that case "founder" still looks good on a resume while "engineer at company no one's ever heard of" is neutral to negative at best.