[verdverm]

Your equity shares should be much more equal. You should have had legal docs in place, been getting paid.

My experience has been people from the professional services (docs, lawyers, RE) have no clue about running companies or being fair to their partners. If they aren't helping, they aren't really partners. Ideas are worthless, execution is what counts. Does not sound like these folks are executing or going all in on their ideas.

Negotiate or run. They should be full time too, with equal equity, or give you the majority stake.

If they insist on their current terms, they will likely never succeed with anyone, so you should move on.

[tedthayer]

That's an interesting take, I do see some logic to getting such a significant stake- but I doubt that would be considered. A lot of the value they attribute to pending patents that have come out of the lab

[verdverm]

Patents are worthless unless you can execute on the business and can afford to police and prosecute said patents. Then someone comes around with an even better solution which they patent. They think patents (ideas) are worth money because they don't know better yet.

Don't undervalue your role in all this. I would leave of I were you, not worth the troubles. You will most definitely be happier working for someone else and also enjoy getting paid.

[tedthayer]

Yeah I see your point. When I work alongside the founder though it's awesome. We have similar values and will just basically work nonstop, like when we were getting the YC application ready. He is just a professor/lab director and CTO of another company so his focus is split until he leaves in ~6mo. I definitely see the potential in the technology, brand, him etc. But these are not small issues to ignore...