Ive been thinking that a properly constructed company-wide and long-term profit sharing scheme is the best way to combat this.

Early employees take onboard the most risk with a venture and even if they don't want to be or are not able to be VP of X when the company sales they should still maintain the material (and psychological) benefits. I bet people would have less of a problem being demoted if they knew their eventual payday would be larger than their new boss.

It's possible to construct a profit sharing scheme where x% of future profits is dedicated to a pool of employees and weighted more according to risk than seniority. And to offset the negative aspects (investor wise) of this with buyout clauses based on some fair metrics.