If you’re joining an early stage venture backed startup and demanding only a salary and no equity, you’ll feel much worse if your startup finds any reasonable level of success because you demanded 20k more a year in salary over something that could be much more than that.

You’re not risking your life savings by joining a venture backed startup as an employee. In the worst case you write off a few thousand dollars you spent exercising some options while making a market rate salary (because you negotiated).