... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
In the early days of a startup, people's compensation is whatever you negotiate with a founder and it's all over the place.
Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
The idea should come first, the startup should come second.
You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.