IIRC 'creators' as far as Grumroad's tagline is concerned are their customers.

Yes, understood, but I guess Nathan Barry's point would be why treat your company co-creators differently than your customer-creators.

Call me crazy but I think the deal between the two is dramatically different up front, even what everyone does.

End customer's don't have any equity... in the end neither did the employees. That's the same, unfortunately. But they're the same that way.

I think those are two dramatically different deals you're making with people, pretending they should be the same seems oblivious to the actual relationships.