I am drawing a distinction between someone likely to only currently be a good individual contributor, and thus who will not have the option of founding his own startup at that point in time, and a well rounded candidate who brings a lot more to the table. One percent is a lot of equity even as employee one if that person is not going to be in a leadership role later. It was what the mint designer and a few other first hire top notch individual contributors at startups I know have received.

I definitely agree you get more equity during bootstrap time vs. in series a funded startups. I just think the combination of survivorship bias and cash comp makes it a better deal to wait.

Actually someone respectable (Suster?) posted a few months back about how there are discontinuities...and that immediately pre series a closing is a much better time to join than immediately post, since the reduction in risk is far smaller than the reduction in equity. I think the opposite is true between employee one and immediately post a.

By real financing I include mega angel seed rounds. For me a 1.5 seed round vs a 3 vc series a is a distinction without a difference.