> paying them a consistent percentage for that value
Except... there's a market. People want to be paid based on a market clearing rate, not on your appraisal of value. And what is value anyway? If a company is in build mode and not generating any value is nobody paid anything?
If your value percentage does't cover market rate, then you might need to rethink your business. Market rate is derived from value percentage across all companies that seek the same talent (and also negotiating strength etc.).
If a company is in build mode, there are other creative ways to compensate (stock, etc.) or you convince investors of future value so you can afford to build it (investors) by paying market rate. An investor who just gave you millions of dollars to build something, probably doesn't want to hear about how you're going to cut costs by hiring overseas talent.
If the only way you can succeed is by exploiting location based salaries, then your business isn't just competing in it's product market, but also competing with every other business that is trying to exploit location based salaries (and there's a lot).
I'm saying is that focusing your energies on trying to get location based cheap labour might not be the best use of your time. How am I arguing that people should starve?
If you're building, and paying people in stock, then people can't trade that stock, and they can't buy food with it. So they'll go elsewhere where they get compensation they can buy food with.
Why is that a problem though? Businesses fail every day. Are you saying that paying less for 3rd world talent is going to make or break this business?
What I'm hearing is a bit contrived:
1. You only have enough cashflow to pay exploitative location based salaries.
2. You need talent (can't do it yourself).
3. You can't convince anyone to invest in it.
4. You can't attract talent with a low pay + ownership / stock deal.
Except... there's a market. People want to be paid based on a market clearing rate, not on your appraisal of value. And what is value anyway? If a company is in build mode and not generating any value is nobody paid anything?