People are rarely aware of all the details of their contracts. I know that must sound funny to those who won't sign anything without reading it and understanding it but it is't rare at all for someone to be handed a 'standard' contract and signing it without fully understanding all the implications. Hence my first advice to hire a lawyer.

OP doesn't really understand their situation or their rights; that's why the submission was created. Also considering the OP's writing, they probably don't fully grok the legalese of their contracts.

IANAL, but my understanding is that in order for the company to keep ownership of your designs, code, and other IP, you'd need to get some sort of consideration for that work. If you've been paid at least minimum wage then that counts as consideration, but if you haven't then you need to negotiate something reasonable in situations where a founder leaves the company before their 1-year cliff. 3% is fine, 0% wouldn't be fine though, unless again he had been getting paid. This is the reason why startups are always supposed to pay each founder at least minimum wage, even though normal employment laws usually don't require an owner of a business to pay themselves anything.

Yea, this is called a "double trigger" and is often written into founder reverse vesting agreements signed during formation. The idea is that at first, you can be fired as per usual like any employee. But, if there's a significant change in control of the company (e.x. M&A of >50% of outstanding shares), then _one_ of the triggers has been met. At that point, if you're fired without cause, that's the second trigger and remaining unvested shares immediately become fully vested.

Of course, I've since learned that pretty much _anything_ can be re-worked in an M&A agreement -- "we're not buying you without striking this clause" -- so it's no silver bullet.