I totally agree that founders/hiring managers should be very clear on how employees are comped. However, in this specific case, I think a >= 1x preference is so utterly standard that employees of a startup need to do 5 minutes of due diligence and understand how their comp works.

For everyone reading this, there are 3 outcomes:

company failure, company success, middling

In the middling outcomes, people need to know the negotiated rules re: who gets what