(post author here): The team did not have equity but I paid out substantial bonuses voluntarily to all employees. There's a lot of work to be done on how to incentivize employees in bootstrapped startups tbh. Nathan Barry has some good posts on the topic but I don't think it's a problem with any best practices yet:
https://nathanbarry.com/profit-sharing/https://nathanbarry.com/equity/
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Yeah, you arrived at the root of my question which was how do you share with your team, especially in a closely held startup.. I probably would have been better served directly asking the question. ;)
