An agreement signed by employees and founders that assigns all work product and inventions created during employment to the company.
A PIIA (Proprietary Information and Inventions Assignment), sometimes called a CIIA (Confidential Information and Inventions Agreement), is a foundational employment document that assigns intellectual property from the individual to the company. Every founder and every employee should sign one at the start of their tenure.
The PIIA does two main things: it establishes confidentiality obligations (the person agrees not to share the company's confidential information with outsiders), and it assigns all IP created during employment — or related to the company's business — to the company. This assignment is what gives the company legal ownership of its product, technology, and creative work.
Without PIIAs, the IP chain of title is broken. If a founder wrote the initial code and never assigned it to the company, the company doesn't legally own its own product. Investors will flag this in due diligence and either require it to be fixed (sometimes requiring a complex assignment process years later) or will walk away. This is one of the most common but fixable cleanup items for early-stage startups.