Skip equity, charge them flat 60-100K for the app, they do have seed money to burn. Let them fail on their own.
2 business persons and 1 creative/marketing. None of them technical. All of them have highly paid day jobs as high ups in a big (really big) company. They are trying to hire people who quit or were laid off from such big company. All they talk about is having a big enough sell price so they can quit their jobs, only the creative truly thinks about the product.
I agree, they seemed to have fallen on their lie of then not having money. They want a contractor to build an app I should probably charge as a contractor.
So they have another full-time job, and they're doing this on the side without full-time effort? You're the startup's only full-time employee?
First full time employee. They are hiring a server side dev, UX, Design and QA.
It sounds like they have a startup hobby rather than taking it seriously.
It sounds like a dead-end to me. They're going to blow through 3-12 months worth of expenses, realize they have nothing to show for it, decide to stop wasting their money, and shut it down.