Good point. The high salaries techies can land on short notice are almost as good as having FU money. You don't have to stick your head in that snarling contrac

Good point. The high salaries techies can land on short notice are almost as good as having FU money. You don't have to stick your head in that snarling contract's mouth. You also have entities out there like YCombinator and even NVCA that publish standard deal terms that are relatively founder-friendly. Founders negotiating deals even outside the orbit of these entities can reference these terms and say "these are the standard and they were used for 'insert well-known startup here' by 'top-flying VC here'" and push back on any onerous terms by just calling them weird and non-standard. That goes a long way toward curtailing the kind of obscure shenanigans you see in music contracts. Edit: I'm referring to SAFEs, the YC Series AA docs, and the NVCA templates.