You'd have to be pretty dumb to be an employee at a startup because of the money: bad hours, lots of risk, bad pay and lots of personal confrontation.
If the employees get screwed over, then it doesn't sound like they are valued. I see many startups where the employees are super valued assets, get a decent salary AND they do what they love.
Most good founders were employees at hot startups, where they learned what to do and joined 'networks of success.'
Most Y Combinator founders are young, so sample bias is likely present. Then again, Atlanta sucks, so only old fuckers start companies. :)
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You take almost as much risk and work just as many hours as when you work for yourself. Except you own very little in equity (as a developer, usually less than 10%) and you have no control over what happens with the company (usually when VC takes over, they will be trying to make an ROI asap at the expense of any long-term plans).
Working at Weebly, you have similar hours to BigCo (although you'll be 10x more productive), paid market rate (or slightly above), and receive your fair share of the outcome.
You also get to work with a fun group of people who are obsessed with being productive, and not much else. Maybe we're the exception, but we don't care if you're a 9-5 type of person, if you're very productive during those hours.
Working at a startup doesn't have to be shit, just because some startups are.
I'm not a startup cheerleader -- "come change the world!" is the most overused pitch line ever -- but there are tons of examples (37signals, some YC teams, some of the larger NY startups) countering this generalization.
It's clearly not all unicorns and cupcakes, but there's a difference between "work for us at 2/3rds market plus 1%" and "we're VC-backed, work for us at market and get health plus other nice perks." Startups are not uniform.