The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.

Employees will only add more value over time.

As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.

Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.

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

... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.

I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.