Here’s a list of the top 5 deal terms that cause harm to startups at the seed financing stage and therefore should be avoided: 5. Control “Control” of a startup can manifest itself in various forms such as equal (or investor-favorable) representation on the board of directors or a requirement of obtaining seed investor approval [...]
There’s a lot of advice about (1) how to attract VCs, and (2) how to negotiate a venture capital term sheet. Both sets of advice tend to ignore the gap between an investor’s expression of investment interest and your startup’s receipt of the term sheet. I refer to this waiting period as “term sheet purgatory.” [...]
Selecting the optimal structure when raising capital for your startup can be a challenging task. When clients ask me for my recommendation, I find myself recommending the convertible debt financing route more often than traditional equity financing (i.e., I’ll give you $100k for 20% of your company’s stock). So what is convertible debt? Convertible debt [...]
Recently I have been asked a lot of questions regarding nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) and investors, either angel or venture capital. I previously wrote my thoughts on trying to drop NDAs on venture capital firms in “Why a VC Will Take a Lighter to Your NDA.” And yesterday, Guy Kawasaki echoed my NDA-VC sentiments in “The [...]
Y Combinator and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati are happy to announce the Series AA Equity Financing Documents. The Y Combinator documents are back up again–grab them while you can. At first glance, it looks like they added a term sheet. And now each document comes with a fancy new header: This [document] and all [...]
Ryan Roberts is a startup lawyer and represents technology companies through all phases of the startup process, including incorporation, seed & venture financings, and exit transactions. Click here to learn more about his practice.
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