They've been all the best ones, in my career; and I have no idea what you mean by "low pay", unless it's merely "not the very tippy-top highest pay". Which is fine: there's more to life than just money.
Most people do not want to work for subpar pay in the one of the most expensive areas in the US. Especially when you're getting diluted off of the cap table as happens now. You're always ending up behind.
That's before considering people with actual life responsibilities.
Being in the first handful of non-founder startup employees at some seed stage company is probably not the most lucrative thing, but once companies are post Series A, as far as I can tell they tend to be comp competitive with bigger companies.
Obviously not many companies can compete with Meta or Jane Street for salaries, but that's true whether you're talking about a startup or the majority of the S&P 500 companies.