Question: Do they have any intention of going public? If not, then what's the point of equity? Profit Sharing?
Right - profit sharing. Unless they are trying to build a cash hoard for an acquisition (doubtful) or buy out Ebay (somewhat more likely).
Probably not after the whole eBay fiasco.
Which is why I wanted to find out for sure.
No equity at all? I doubt that. The eBay fiasco arose because one employee had ~28% equity in the company, which is far, far more than an engineer joining at this stage could reasonably expect to receive.
Don't you think it had more to do with the fact that the company was structured so that he could sell his equity to outsiders?