If someone is choosing between joining McKinsey or your startup it's very unlikely they're going to work out at the startup.

You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.

Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster

Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.

Here's a good rule of thumb: don't worry about a competitor at all, until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product.

You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.

Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.