Are they going to have anti-dilution protection?

Nobody gets anti-dilution protection. Including founders.

By saying "including founders" you make it seem so fair. After all, if there is any benefit, founders should get it, right?

But, founders obviously cannot have anti-dilution prevention. When a company is founded, by definition the founders have 100% of it, and the only way they can raise money is by diluting.

If two founders and three VC reps are sitting around the board table discussing the next round of funding, if there is heavy dilution it will often include stock grants to all the people sitting around the table to reduce their pain. An employee doesn't have a seat sitting around that table, so he is more likely to be pinched by dilution that the founders or the VCs.

Well it could work if the amount of stock is effectively fixed at creation time. Everyone I've ever talked to who doesn't already know how stock works is very surprised that more stock can be conjured out of nowhere. They always assume that new stock is formed by subdividing the existing stock (splitting) and that investors get shares that used to belong to the founders.

Before working on startups I worked on Wall Street so I can't look objectively at this statement. If that's really true, it's a failure in our education system. Isn't it crazy that to drive a car in this country we need to take a written and practical exam but to invest our life savings we just open an account. Everyone should be forced to study the series 7 material in high school.

I'm not a VC so I can't say I've sat around in the above scenario a million times but I don't think a series B or C involves giving stock grants to founders just to keep their % high and avoid the impact of dilution. (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Every round they get diluted, they've just started out with more. I think the founder advantage might come in to play when a B or C actually liquidates founder shares.

Potentially later stage startups that retain founders as C level executives grant stock but that's a separate distinction I would think.

It's not a matter of course, but if anyone sitting around the board room table has found their investment dwindle away, they will get grants enough to have them stick around.

If you aren't around that board room table, you are SOL.