Well, what you are essentially saying is that if you need money, VCs can and will make you dance to their tunes. That much has been confirmed by Parker Conrad himself, so I agree. It's not really a red flag since he could have a number of reasons for leaving that are not related to the business. But I guess a VC would use anything as an excuse to control and manipulate things.

This really puts a giant question mark on why anyone would bother with a non-CEO founding role. Startups are hard enough as it is, adding to it the potential of losing all your equity because you had a falling out with the CEO makes it almost not worth the trouble.

Engineers getting into partnerships with domineering business types should definitely watch out for this and evaluate their options. At least when you work for Microsoft and leave after 2 years, they cannot claw back what you earned over that period of time.

> ... adding to it the potential of losing all your equity because you had a falling out with the CEO makes it almost not worth the trouble.

That's why you set up terms up front. If, when they decided on a 33/33/33 split, they also decided on a vesting schedule, they wouldn't have this problem. The OP would get some percentage value based on math, from contract terms they all agreed to when they started.

Exactly. They should have had this worked out from the start, just in case. "Irreconcilable differences" isn't the only thing that can go awry, and a vesting schedule protects everyone.

If you're losing all your equity after over a year of work just because you had a falling-out with co-founders (or investors), you didn't do your homework.

You JUST said, that the terms won't matter, the vesting won't matter if you leave, since it is a red flag. You implied that "doing your homework" may not protect you, since even vested equity of an ex-cofounder might be frowned upon.

So which side are you arguing on?