Just ask partners in law firms or consultancies, or ask yourself if you’d like to own stock in Cargill, IKEA, Mars, Brown Brother Harriman, Bloomberg, Chik-fil-a, fidelity, etc.
But the average private tech company isn’t like that. There’s probably 2-4 founders who pay themselves extravagant salaries and control all voting shares. Minority equity never gets a payday.
Tech companies are usually corporations (often C corps in the startup world.) What equity gets you in the two scenarios is completely different.
Tech start-ups are typically incorporated as c-corps as their structure makes it easier to grant options, startups don’t want to make tax distributions if they make money, LLCs can’t issue preferred shares, and s-corps can’t have more than 100 shareholders, etc. just to name a few.
No one at Cargill or Bloomberg thinks twice about whether the equity is in a c-Corp to LP (all else’s being equal)