An idea-stage startup should not be paying a FTE 120k. That is lunacy and engineers need to start to understand this. More equity, lower salary until there is money coming in would help more companies survive longer while they look for product-market fit.
I don't doubt that you're right about this, but I'm using the (lowball) estimate of the cost of a single developer as a benchmark for the amount of money we're talking about. Also: I'm not sure what you call someone who takes half salary in exchange for equity. It's probably not "cofounder", but "employee" doesn't fully capture it either.
