In New York City I was just offered a job at a startup, as a senior engineer. The company is small (only 5 people) but they have many customers, they are profitable, and it is fairly certain they are going to be successful. They had, for years, offered sysadmin services to companies in New York City, but during that time they built a meta-framework on top of Chef, a framework that allows the automation of a fantastic range of sysadmin tasks, and now they've built a GUI on top of it, so less talented people can do a wide range of tasks.

They plan to grow for 5 years and then sell for something between $25 to $100 million, depending on how much growth they get.

I was offered $90,000 and 1% of the company. This is a startup where the risks are fairly low, considering that they already have customers who love them, and they are cash flow positive, and they are growing quickly.

For a risky startup, I would have asked for 4%.