As an employee, I would see that as a really bad sign; and would probably not feel secure about getting paid every month. If you are not able to buy a new laptop for your new employee, is it really needed to get a new employee at all?
I don't think companies need all employees under 6-core Mac Pros with 4K monitors, but having good computers also makes the job easier and pleasant.
The day I start my own company I will impose this rule for development/design team:
1. Fatest Macbook Pro Retina: mobility and power. 2. 16Gb mem or higher: so mem is the least of the problems. 3. Double monitor: work better from start, no need to watch 1 screen. 4. Mechanical keyboard: confort, speed and healty. 5. All machines under LAN, WiFi is slow imho.
A lot to think about with that though: Obviously they need to be insured against loss, theft and damage. We'd probably need some spare laptops around in case anyone is temporarily without one for any reason.
Also, I guess some 'give it back please' policy for anyone who's terminated within the first few months? And you'd probably need to commit to replacing them every year or two, or we'd be compromising productivity. It'd take a while to hammer out all these kinks. Interested to know what others do!
I would prefer being given $500 and being told get yourself the equipment you need be it a chair, desk, keyboard, mouse. Whet ever is going to make your life the easiest.
There is no point in having a lovely laptop if you get back troubles because your desk and chair are not up to the job.
As other responders have pointed out, there are various reasons it's better for the company to provide company-owned boxes, but the stakes aren't very high in the very early days. Just make sure people aren't doing stupid stuff like not having screenlocks.
Otherwise, it's up to you. It's a nice thing to do, but not necessary.
Now, the calculus is likely a bit different when you're just a few guys noodling around with an idea than when you have actual users or worse, customers. But if I had enough money coming into my company to fund employees, one of my first priorities would be to get them corp laptops & desktops and request that they please try to limit personal usage of those machines, particularly usage outside of the corporate firewalls. After the hundred grand or so for an employee's salary, getting them nice hardware is peanuts. And if you're taking customers' credit card information or other personal identification, you have a responsibility to them not to open that information up to any hacker who can pwn a laptop.
Plus, the hassles are reduced when we (the company) own the equipment - we can set policies for how these machines are to be used, which are productive policies. We have far more control over time being wasted in the toolings phase of things - all our machines are configured the same way, so anyone can sit anywhere on these laptops, and still be functionally productive.
That said, we've had some real success with providing VM's to be used by our staff - and this means we can reduce the power-requirements on the desktop, immensely. There's something very satisfying in watching 8 people work on the same Linux Server, albeit remotely, each with their own VM ..