The risk is in abandoning your good job at a stable firm working for a known, reasonable entity for a pot shot that could be just about anything and statistically will most likely fail, taking you down with it since you're being paid $60,000 below market according to the owner's own admission.
It's amazing that people don't think that is worth considering.
Yes but according to the article, he wanted his normal salary and the equity. So the only part of your comment that applies is leaving a stable job for an unstable one.
This is a risk but not a big risk at all if the engineer was "one of the best engineers in his area" because he would be able to find another job easily.
It's amazing that people don't think that is worth considering.