I really like the rationale for the FAST agreement. Startup founders without experience bringing on advisors often need help bracketing equity grants for those advisors, and often those negotiations take place before outside general counsel is retained and there is already a stake in the ground. The FAST approach uses a simple 3×3 grid to…
Read MoreI recently launched a preferred financing calculations tool for you. It’s an online spreadsheet for you to enter some basic capitalization information, a target pre-money valuation, and a target investment amount. It then shows you the results for your cap table. Some inherent things about venture math that are embodied here but that you might…
Read MoreHow should I account for convertible notes of a company before I invest? Convertible notes aren’t new; they’ve been around for over 15 years, mutating from their original form as bridge notes used by VCs to provide short-term capital to a company while a financing deal was pending. But people still get confused when it…
Read MoreOver the years I’ve had many occasions to figure out the price of an offering of preferred stock for a typical venture funded startup. This is different from, and definitely not to be confused with, the valuation of the company on a pre-money basis. That’s a topic for a later post. In its most simple…
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