Chapter 3 – What the Original Contract Actually Said

It took Ivy nearly two weeks of going through old files, emails, and a dusty external hard drive from the company’s earliest days before she found what she needed — not a stronger version of the cofounder agreement, which was as weak as she’d feared, but something else entirely.

Buried in an old email thread from Fieldnote’s first year was a signed side agreement, negotiated during the company’s first funding round, in which Sophia had personally guaranteed Ivy a permanent board seat and veto rights over any technical leadership change, in exchange for Ivy agreeing to a lower initial salary that had let the young company preserve its limited early cash.

The agreement had been drafted quickly, informally, by a lawyer friend doing them a favor — but it was signed, dated, and legally binding regardless of how casually it had been produced.

Sophia, in the years since, had clearly either forgotten the side agreement existed or assumed Ivy had lost track of it amid the company’s rapid growth. Ivy had done neither.

She contacted an employment attorney the same week, and within days had confirmed what she suspected — her termination, and the board’s technical leadership change, had been executed in direct violation of a legally binding agreement Sophia herself had signed.

“This isn’t just an unfair firing,” her attorney told her. “This is breach of contract, with damages that could be substantial, and grounds to demand your board seat back entirely.”