Once again I agree with the first part of what you said and disagree with the rest. Yes, changes in some of the clauses do require board approval, and no, I absolutely do impute intentionality to abusive contracts. It’s not like the company lawyers (and therefore founders) don’t know the details of the contracts: founders themselves sign some corrected variant of it. Therefore they do not get to use malice/incompetence platitudes in their own defense. I do now consider the presence of certain clauses in an option contract a _major_, deal breaking red flag.