As he points out, most people feel that being treated fairly is the most important thing (this has more to do with not being demotivated by an unfair split than being motivated by the equity itself). The beauty of this kind of post is that once it achieves a certain level of notoriety, it automatically becomes “fair” in everyone’s mind.

For example a new employee comes on board. You explain, “We use the Joel method for allocating and vesting equity.” Oh! Great! That’s fair...