Was acqui-hired a couple years ago, and after that vetted several other acqui-hires on behalf of my new employer. A couple quick points:
Few engineers understand that their interests != the founding team's interests and negotiate hard against the founding team. The engineers that do, do much better for themselves. You need to own the possibility of being the asshole that ruins the deal for everyone, but reframe it. Put that decision in their hands. "I want to play ball, but I am burnt out and I need X for this to be worth all the stress and anguish." If they don't give you X, they're ruining it, not you. This "stress and anguish" argument is not bullshit. You have dealt with stress and anguish already, but realize also that there will be more. Two of the five devs on our team got acqui-hired and never made it to vesting because they got so disheartened. It could easily have been three or four. This is not as uncommon as you'd think.
You are saying that you want to leave early and the sale to be about the product, not the team, but you also want leverage. That makes no sense. You can't have it both ways. If the company is buying the product, you won't have a ton of leverage. If the company is paying you a high price, it's because they're buying you, and you're almost certainly going to have to swallow at least a year of vesting to get anything out of this. And that won't be a one-year vesting program, either -- it will be 3-4 years' worth of vesting and you'll be walking away at a year taking home the first big chunk but leaving a lot of it still on the table. This is stupid but pretty commonplace.
Feel free to e-mail if you want more specific advice. I've been through this recently and know a bunch of other people who have as well.
Few engineers understand that their interests != the founding team's interests and negotiate hard against the founding team. The engineers that do, do much better for themselves. You need to own the possibility of being the asshole that ruins the deal for everyone, but reframe it. Put that decision in their hands. "I want to play ball, but I am burnt out and I need X for this to be worth all the stress and anguish." If they don't give you X, they're ruining it, not you. This "stress and anguish" argument is not bullshit. You have dealt with stress and anguish already, but realize also that there will be more. Two of the five devs on our team got acqui-hired and never made it to vesting because they got so disheartened. It could easily have been three or four. This is not as uncommon as you'd think.
You are saying that you want to leave early and the sale to be about the product, not the team, but you also want leverage. That makes no sense. You can't have it both ways. If the company is buying the product, you won't have a ton of leverage. If the company is paying you a high price, it's because they're buying you, and you're almost certainly going to have to swallow at least a year of vesting to get anything out of this. And that won't be a one-year vesting program, either -- it will be 3-4 years' worth of vesting and you'll be walking away at a year taking home the first big chunk but leaving a lot of it still on the table. This is stupid but pretty commonplace.
Feel free to e-mail if you want more specific advice. I've been through this recently and know a bunch of other people who have as well.