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It sounds like you've thought this through pretty well. I would just have a frank discussion with them about it; making sure to mention the bargaining chips you've mentioned here.

If I ran a company and the tech guy thought it was a good enough idea that he wanted some equity in exchange for a somewhat smaller salary, I'd probably be pretty happy that I had someone working with me who saw the value in what we were doing.

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I guess what I'm looking for is some advice on how to partner with them for money. I'm not sure what's standard and what's rude. Or how a % of the company would get paid out. These aren't questions I want to ask them.

Unfortunately I can't give you any advice regarding specific percentages. But I would be very up front with them regarding wanting to take a bigger part of the action.

Something along the lines of "Hey, I think this is a really amazing service and I believe it's going to be very successful. I'd really like to talk to you about making this a partnership instead of just being an employee. Here are the ways I think I can really contribute to the success of this thing..."

I was thinking about monthly share of profits vs annual bonus vs non voting shares for a cut of the sale of the company. I'm not sure what the long term benefits are in the different cases.

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