Ask HN: First technical cofounders, do you hedge against working for free?

Would a better title have been "First technical cofounders - did you sign away your rights to the code you wrote?"?

How do you hedge against a startup that hires you to write code for almost free (high equity, low cash), that helps them get launched, gain traction and proceeds to fire you because they can now hire a cheaper labor force, given that they have some traction and cash?

Typical employment agreements require you to assign any and all IP to the company, so there's little to stop a company from doing this, except ethics.

During a recent Ask HN[0] I observed that "true" startups in the extremely early stages have little to no cash and they might want a tech cofounder and give them equal equity but very little, if any cash compensation.

Assuming you did not need cash because you were in a situation to work off pure equity for a while, did you also agree to sign away your rights to the code you wrote from the very first day while being paid (almost) no cash?

I would imagine the first technical cofounder would like to hedge against future bad behavior by licensing the code under a model that would pay them a market rate for work performed so far, if they were let go but the company went on to become successfull using what the first technical cofounder built?

If so, what was your hedge?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39886990