Dear Founder,
You have a world-changing idea of solving an important problem.
You have co-founder/s or decided to go solo.
You quit your job.
You built something that people want.
You found customers.
You built a world-class team.
You convinced investors you have the right to win.
And, finally a VC is ready to give you lots of money so that you can go back to building your startup. But before giving you money, they give you a term sheet and they expect you to sign it right away. It's a legal document and it looks confusing.
You also realise that your full-time job is to build products, team, culture and a viable business.
But, but, but ...
Investors' full-time job is to negotiate contracts like term sheets and they probably have been doing it for years and are good at it.
Maybe you have heard of the saying "If you don't know who's the fool on the table, it's probably you". Honestly, by reading the term sheet, it's not very clear who's the fool on the table.
The investors say, "Don't worry, you can take help from our lawyer" and all sorts of alarm bells start ringing in your head. So, you call up another founder and ask them if they knows any good lawyers. They recommend someone. But you also realise, lawyers work harder for someone who knows what they are doing.
Your startup is your baby and the worst nightmare of a VC backed entrepreneur is to be kicked out of the very company they founded. If you have seen the TV series Silicon Valley, you might recollect this scene below.
I have been a founder before and I have created this page to make sure founders have that someone who could tell them that they could take less.
Luckily, you don't have to share your term sheet or any of your personal information with me. Take the below prompt and use your favourite LLM model with the biggest context size and attach your term sheet over there.
Yours truly,
Pranit Bauva
pranit <at> bauva.com
- Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
- Venture Capital Deal Terms by Harm De Vries, Menno Van Loon, Sjoerd Mol
Copyright © Pranit Bauva. All rights reserved. This should not be considered legal advice.