Your comment hints at the issue. It isn't measuring effort in vs money out, it's likelihood of reward for effort. At this stage it's clear that if you count options and even equity as zero you'll often be right.

If a startup hands me a picture of treasure in some place I can quickly get to (i.e. little investment on my part) and a shovel, I'll invest a couple of hours for the chance of getting rich. If they hand me a lottery ticket that they can void if it did happen to win, I'm not going to spend months or years slaving away for that.