<human>: Can you give me the gist of the text in a nutshell?

A 10 month-old start-up is looking at bringing me on as "Director of IT", aka "The only geek on staff". I've developed several programs for them already (for which I need to [figure out the license](

To come on board, I'm giving up a -really- sweet gig teaching at a private university. For a while at least, the pay will be lower than teaching and I'll be working crazy hours in "start-up mode". My concern is that one of the partners is notoriously tight-fisted, and after I do a bunch of development work he may look at me and decide I'm too expensive to keep on staff.

What kind of arrangements do people put into contracts for situations like this? "You can't fire me without cause" seems ineffective, and wouldn't work in my state anyways. "If I leave, I take everything I developed with me" would rock, but they'd be idiots to sign it.

Maybe some kind of equity arrangement with a vesting schedule? I doubt they're in the mood to part with any of the company, but is there a way to put a lock on future revenues as long as they use my systems?
<bot>: I'm terrified that I'm about to put a ton of hours into a new job and get sacked as soon as all their systems work. Help?