That's a super naive understanding of how it works to "setup a business", outside of I guess a sole-proprietor tiny little situation.

And regardless - let me ask you, why must it be all or nothing? Under your scenario, I either take all of the risk myself by founding the business, or I am strictly paid in dollars by someone who did, and nothing in between - but why? What's the argument that this is a good way to do things? Am I not taking some risk by buying into the company I work for? Why is that only an option for the very top of the company? Because "risk" is a misnomer that focuses on the wrong part, and actually it's freaking great to have a true stake in your place of employment?

I'm not arguing that it's impossible to start a business, or to work and scrape and get lucky and transition into the ownership class in some small capacity. I'm saying having only a few people have true skin in the game for any business is frickin stupid, a bad way to do things, likely to produce half-hearted efforts from employees, and guaranteed to produce the extreme wealth inequality we see today.

Edit: bit more detail on my preferred approach