Recently read "Pimp" by Iceberg Slim, and it seems like a training manual for (some) modern managers and executives. Use your recruiting process to select low-esteem, easily manipulated people to be your worker drones, and they will do 80 hour weeks to earn that pizza party.

who deeply believe in the mission (and the future value of their equity)

This is the only proviso for me. Some people wouldn't mind working themselves to exhaustion for a lot of money. Then the question of whether it's exploitative or not depends on the amounts involved and the conditions of equity ownership