I would replace "early employees" with "early engineers". Not sure why, precisely, but it wouldn't surprise me if negotiating prowess played a role.
Companies I've worked for in the past would never dole out more than 1% to engineers, but dropped anywhere from 2-5% on sales / biz-dev / managers. In one case, the engineers had actually been with the company for years and working at half-market wages prior to the non-technical hires.
