Have any founders tried recruiting with an equity + salary offer where for the first year, the equity offer is translated into salary? Not like Buffer's offer of equity instead of salary, but as something like "we acknowledge you could be working hard for something that never vests. Your fair value is X. We've offered you .5X + equity. For the first year, we are willing to offer you .8X, which then drops to .5X." Any raises could be translated into a percentage raise, or could just be added to the changing basis.

It's a weird idea to have your salary drop after a year, but it might be an interesting avenue to pursue.

However, successful startups usually don't have the salary issues outside of the beginning, so it may not work just because of that. I'm just really interested in trying to perfectly align incentives, and the founder vs. first employee one is the toughest nut to crack for me.