You should probably read this prescient thread a few weeks back. If you go through the comments, the majority of early employees got screwed by the founders. The ones that benefited are the best-of-breed companies like AMZN, GOOG, etc. They took care of their employees.
I'm not talking about the final exit. I'm talking about an award to the founders if they can get the company to a billion dollar valuation. That's all I'm talking about. And not Fu money but something of the order of 1million which would give the entrepreneur a small nest egg for having gotten this far but doesn't really make him financially secure.
And I agree that shafting employees is reprehensible and downright despicable.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2958766