As a consultant/freelancer, the relationship is often very different then employer-to-employee. If you're billing hourly then long hours directly relate to large invoices. You're in the driver's seat for how much you want to work.
You can get a lot of the great benefits of startup work (cool people, small teams, fast pace) and avoid a lot of the pitfalls (low salary, worthless equity, guilt trips).
For me personally I have managed to get higher hourly rates from startups than larger companies. Simply because they actually value me and my work and can see it directly reflected on their bottom line.
I could probably get better rates at bigger companies, but being a small guy in a big pond of what, to them, looks like interchangable cogs I don't have a lot of bargaining power.
How do you convince someone who doesn't know about this stuff, that it's better to pay you fairly than pay peanuts to the neighboor kid? (for what they think is equal work done at equal quality since they don't care)
You can get a lot of the great benefits of startup work (cool people, small teams, fast pace) and avoid a lot of the pitfalls (low salary, worthless equity, guilt trips).