Because you framed it as a Technical Partner needing a 'Business Guy' and approached someone from the post-2000 Cohort who uses the Wozniak/Gates power-dynamic as a best-practice case study (or RIM's example of Mike Lazaridis/Jim Balsillie).
The fact that you spent months refining the idea and building out prototypes is irrelevant or even detrimental to your position. In fact it may have represented a delivery anti-pattern depending on how far along you were to realising your value proposition as a product. Engineers to build MVPs are a dime a dozen. Why were you wasting time as an individual contributor when positioning yourself as a (co)-founder? Why would a prospective C-Level Business Strategy Leader see you as anything other than an Engineer with a MVP and no GTM, previous exits aside?
This is a common scenario for those who frame themselves as 'Technical Founders' - they end up being perceived as a cost-centre incapable of realising any sort of a GTM strategy, and as such are equity-weighted accordingly.
The fact that you spent months refining the idea and building out prototypes is irrelevant or even detrimental to your position. In fact it may have represented a delivery anti-pattern depending on how far along you were to realising your value proposition as a product. Engineers to build MVPs are a dime a dozen. Why were you wasting time as an individual contributor when positioning yourself as a (co)-founder? Why would a prospective C-Level Business Strategy Leader see you as anything other than an Engineer with a MVP and no GTM, previous exits aside?
This is a common scenario for those who frame themselves as 'Technical Founders' - they end up being perceived as a cost-centre incapable of realising any sort of a GTM strategy, and as such are equity-weighted accordingly.