Pre-IPO the venture is likely not profitable, so you'd be getting a share of zero. Companies that are VC-backed are going to be held to an expectation of a big payoff, and will be in general discouraged from offering incentives that uncouple employee incentives from an exit. If I understand this right, it's part of why founders have started to be allowed to sell some of their vested shares at funding events, it gives them some more financial runway as the company's timeline stretches out (you don't want the optics of the CEO of your $50m series C to be eating peanut butter and ramen, etc.)

I do think profit sharing would be a good lever for a bootstrapped company that is already profitable and wants to give key employees skin in the game.

The only startups that will offer this will probably be bootstrap companies. Otherwise, VC backed companies will always push for stock options because it’s a better deal for them. I hope more startups starts offering revenue sharing.

More startup folks should read about Tomas Bata [0], he built about 2000 of houses for his workers.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Ba%C5%A5a

Rev share is a tricky incentive. It can incentivize people to waste money chasing revenue. Revenue isn’t always in line with the success of the business.

As a business owner and VC I’d be extremely reluctant to offer that to employees.

I've only heard of this with consulting. Multiple times I have heard traditional shops offer a 1-5?% of e-commerce revenue depending on the portion of work, but it is often since they are skeptical of their own success.

It might say revenue share on the title of the contract, but the body of the contract will be about a share of net or gross profit.