[newy]

"(and doesn't complete freak out investors [and their lawyers doing due diligence])" is the key here.

I totally get where you're coming from in trying to be reasonable with your new hires. Unfortunately, everything-you-do-belongs-to-us is pretty much the standard for IP ownership in employment contracts. Whether you enforce it is a different matter, and this is where your "goodwill" towards your employees will come into play.

jwilliams is correct though, if a guy comes to you with a specific project that he's working on, perhaps you can have a specific carveout -- but even that's a little awkward (may be hard to define the scope of that side project).

At the end of the day, as a company you'll want to be making the call of whether IP created by an employee should be considered company property, and not the other way around. So it might be wise to be a little selfish up front and have a blanket clause.

Just my two cents.