I think we may be past the point where even this would work - too many startups are offering deals that are transparently awful in a way that discredits the startup ecosystem at large. I've gotten a few early-stage startup offers recently and every single one came out to be over a 50% paycut (even accepting their generous valuations) despite the fact that I made it relatively clear where the total comp needs to be for me to move forward and I was assured that at the end of the process they would be willing to make it work.

Meanwhile, if you apply the same math to the founders and their equity, in every single case they are paying themselves multiples of what they are offering me and significantly above their own market value, despite them not having done anything yet beyond getting seed funding.

What then happens is that startups like these end up getting what they pay for - they get the appropriate level of talent at market price. This maybe a market-optimal result but the cumulative effect of all these startups doing this is that most top people have sort of written off "working at a startup" as a reasonable career option, because of pay and what pay implies about the talent level of the people they would work with. This hurts all startups, even those that are willing to pay up to get the right talent. And if top engineers won't even consider your company, offering top-tier comp may backfire - you run the risk of overpaying for the same talent you could've gotten at a lower price. It's hard to break out of this cycle - consider how the same few schools are able to persistently attract the best students - and I suspect the entire startup ecosystem is trapped in it.