I keep hearing this. And you'd think with my exposure to start-ups that I'd see a lot of evidence of this. And while it does happen it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Founders are quite often engineers, angels and VCs are not usually blood sucking vampires (though I'm sure those exist as well).

The rule is simple: if you are either late to the party, not aware of your value or compensated as an employee (rather than taking no money off the table in the first couple of years or so) then you will end up with a very small part of the equity.

If you are (a) a (co-)founder, (b) aware of what you contribute or (c) willing to be paid mostly or wholly in equity then you will end up with a substantial portion of the equity. You will then still have to make sure about how the rules around dilution and vesting work to make sure that you get what's yours. But that can be learned in an evening or two. (as opposed to being learned in 3 years with a lot of headaches as a final result and not much else to show for your hard work). This is not nearly as hard as learning how to program or engineer stuff so any tech guy worth their pay will be able to do this. If you can't find anybody to help you out on this front and you need answers feel free to mail me.