He would’ve screwed you anyway. “Equity” is so laughably easy to dilute to nada in startups through various means that there are numerous articles and parodies of it out there.

I worked for a startup that didn’t meet its VC’s “valuation” goal even though we were stupidly profitable nearly from day one. Market-forces driven downround. When I left, the options I had were previously promised to be worth hundreds of thousands but because of dilution, weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. I didn’t let them give me options “in lieu of base comp” though, so I ended up ok but not everyone did.