Of the YC startups I know about Justin is definitely the most interesting to me and I have a lot of relevant experience. But compared with running my own startup I can't imagine joining them this late in the game and being just an employee with a small amount of equity.
JTV is still small enough that you can have a big impact, and you're definitely not treated as "just an employee".
I've been here a little over a month. During the first three weeks, I re-wrote the chat back-end. Now I'm re-writing our search engine. I've also done a bunch of work on our SEO. The work is varied, interesting, and technically challenging. We have big ambitions too - don't think all the interesting work will have been done already when you get here.
Almost every day I also get to be involved in a discussion whose outcome has a real impact on the future direction of the company, and people listen to me - it's awesome!
ok, all those things sound cool, but "Show me the money...". How is the equity stake? Doing cool things is always fun, but hopefully making good money out of it is even more fun.
I know some companies that say they "offer great equity", but when you look really close at it, it is really really minuscle. Some unsupecting developers will buy into it, but I think YC crowd is smarter than that.
Also, historically first employers get screwed, they don't much equity, work as hard as the founders, yet the pay is not that great.
Anyways, I don't know exactly how Justin.tv is, but these are normal concerns that will pop on the head of a good developer before joining something. (btw. I am not looking for a job).
The stake I got wasn't minuscule. If JTV is any kind of a success, I'll have life-changing amounts of money. If it's a big hit, I could be set for life.
Sure, I work as hard as the others now, but they've been working this hard for months - they deserve a bigger stake. I've traded a little less equity for a much bigger chance of success.