You probably could make a good point but this makes no sense:
> It's an iterated game that they play a lot, and you play once, and they have no incentive to play fair.
The player who plays multiple times ("iterated game") has more of an incentive to play fair. That's basic game theory. If you only play once, noone can "punish" you in the next game if you cheat.
I didn't mean iterated game in the game theory sense, because that implies both counter-parties play against each other repeatedly.
It's like when you get a mortgage - it's a once-in-a-lifetime for you, and a Tuesday for them. They know exactly how to (and have mechanisms in place) enforce every part of a contract they've been using and improving for decades; you barely understand the contract because its the first time you've ever seen anything like it, and you have no machinery in place to understand or enforce your side of it. They have one contract they enforce against 1M counter-parties; meanwhile you have 100 different contracts you're supposed to enforce ...at the same level of care and capability? That's never going to happen, and so all you're left with is heuristics like "surely they'll treat me fairly!"
It honestly seems extremely foolish to take VC money under these circumstances.
Yeah, the correct terms for these would probably be "diversification" and "information asymmetry".
I think the main reason for these onerous terms is the fact that without them, the founders would cheat (not people like you or me, but rather, they would attract cheaters if they didn't work so hard to prevent them for succeeding)
The thing about iterated games is better known as the "repeat player advantage". They do indeed play the same game over and over, not one game that goes on and on. The information isn't specific to each case either, typically both parties are equally aware of the facts at hand, it usually means the repeat player simply has more experience and a better grasp of the same information and its implications. This doesn't necessarily involve the usual meaning of information asymmetry, which is more about being different from chess, where both players have a full view of the board.
If someone gives you a contract with an option to purchase shares, you have as much ability to analyse its risks as they do, and frankly if it is a contract to purchase X shares of a class that is so insufficiently specified that it can later refer to a diluted version of the same, then I don't know why on earth people accept them as good consideration. I don't know what laws apply to disclosures around share dilutions in the US, but it is one of the areas in which commercial law often tries to even out a noticeable information gap, just like takeover offers. But they can't save you from accepting it without knowing what it means and looking into how you can protect yourself from its risks.
> It's an iterated game that they play a lot, and you play once, and they have no incentive to play fair.
The player who plays multiple times ("iterated game") has more of an incentive to play fair. That's basic game theory. If you only play once, noone can "punish" you in the next game if you cheat.