It's crazy how "founder friendly" and "investor friendly" (read: "employee unfriendly") the norm has gotten. I would never work for someone else's startup these days. No way, no how. Four orders of magnitude difference between the founders' exit and the early employees' exit is totally unacceptable.
Yeah, I've been burnt badly by that before.
Which is part of why my founder co-matching profiles mention that I'm looking to spread the equity wealth around among early hires, more than is usual.
If a prospective co-founder is turned off by that, without a really compelling reason, then we'd probably clash on other values as well. And I'd also think there's a good chance they'll backstab me when they think they can.
Ah selection bias is the best shield when being used correctly.