I could write a lot about hiring people for below market rates. you can get extremely smart people for that wage; the problem is you can't get people who are both smart and experienced or both smart and educated. At those rates, you are spending significant time training.

That said, if you choose well and you train well, the tradeoffs sometimes can work out quite well for you. People working their first 'real job' are often as dedicated as the founders; they know that if you make it big, even if they don't have equity, their career is made, either with you or with others who have heard of your success.

Yeah, that feels like a strange middle ground between "founder" and "employee"... You would never get enough equity to make the tradeoff a good deal. I'd be surprised if situations like this happen very often.

As a commenter notes below: he's probably talking about €. In the Netherlands, average wages are around 30K a year. Minimum wage is 17K. A young, skilled programmer that is eager to work at a startup might take 2K a month. That's his average starting salary anyway.

>you and your co-founders are it

He's saying there are no employees at this stage. Just the founders.