Offering Developers Startup Equity, A Dialog

So the point of this post is that if the idea has zero chance of success, then you shouldn't work on it for equity. That's cool but Bill is such a caricature that the result seems obvious. Maybe a more interesting question: what bar would Bill have to cross before you would consider taking equity in whole or in part as compensation?

Would he have to show customers in the pipeline, for example? Interested in peoples' opinions and experiences recruiting others. If you were in Bill's position and convinced someone to work for equity, what put you over the top with the potential hire?

For my case, I have done a cash/equity split in cases where I know the people involved and trust their competence. I haven't pushed on the business model at that point, since I have figured that usually it's hard to predict how the market would react to a product/service at early stages.