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Foundervesting. Yesterday I wrote a blog posting on foundervesting (see here ). You should implement restricted stock with vesting at the earliest stages in your company -even before the VC’s ask. Foundervesting is an insurance policy for all team members involved.
One very important item from Chris’s original post that wasn’t picked up by Fred or Brad is foundervesting. Chris writes that early-stage deals should have: Foundervesting w/ acceleration on change of control. Without proper vesting you also place a risk on all other co-founders.
The meme was kicked off by Chris Dixon with this post saying that term sheets need to be simplified and align investor / founder interests. This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC“ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents.
This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over four years, starting with the first 25 percent of shares vesting only after an owner has remained active for at least 12 months (one year cliff ). Key foundervesting should have no cliff.
Hire your co-founder. Vested over 4 years. Truly treat them like a co-founder. If you do decide to go down the 50/50 route, please at least consider: Make sure you have foundervesting for both of you. Give them a large sum of equity. If you ever fall out of love you have a pre-nuptial agreement.
These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over 4 years, starting with the first 25% of such shares vesting only after the employee has remained with the company for at least 12 months (one year “cliff”). Vesting with no cliff.
As a founder I fought with VC’s over vesting as they brought in a new CEO and walked me out the door. As a board member I negotiated with founding CEO’s over vesting when I thought it was their time to go. The fallacy is believing that a founders value is evenly distributed over four years. Where’s My Liquidity Event.
These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over 4 years, starting with the first 25% of such shares vesting only after the employee has remained with the company for at least 12 months (one year “cliff”). Vesting with no cliff.
This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over four years, starting with the first 25 percent of shares vesting only after an owner has remained active for at least 12 months (one year cliff ). Key foundervesting should have no cliff.
These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over 4 years, starting with the first 25% of such shares vesting only after the employee has remained with the company for at least 12 months (one year “cliff”). Vesting starts now.
FounderVesting [Jared Hecht/USV] – Jared joined USV earlier this year and it’ll be interesting to see how his writing changes as he adds ‘institutional VC’ to his founder and angel investor knowledge. Stretching things out to a six-year vest helps to prevent co-founder abandonment.
These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over 4 years, starting with the first 25% of such shares vesting only after the employee has remained with the company for at least 12 months (one year “cliff”). Vesting with no cliff.
Valuation, Size of Raise, Amount of Investment, Form of Investment, Liquidation Waterfall, Option Pool, Board Composition, Anti-Dilution Rights, Protective Provisions, FounderVesting, *original post can be found on Quora @ : [link] *.
This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over four years, starting with the first 25 percent of shares vesting only after an owner has remained active for at least 12 months (one year cliff ). Key foundervesting should have no cliff.
Foundervesting is the most common example. Lawyers going back and forth on minute/inconsequential details, of course. But frequently, there is time spent negotiating business terms which weren’t specified in the tern sheet itself.
We couldn’t use them as is because they don’t have enough detail on key items, like investor protections and foundervesting. Since writing that termsheet we have used it on around four deals and shared it with a few more companies we have had discussions with.
This includes agreeing on how you will handle personal investments in the business, but it also includes many other topics such as founders’ vesting schedules and voting rights. This will save a lot of pain down the road. Every time you put money in the business it represents some form of debt or equity transaction.
We couldn’t use them as is because they don’t have enough detail on key items, like investor protections and foundervesting. Since writing that termsheet we have used it on around four deals and shared it with a few more companies we have had discussions with.
Also, founders should absolutely implement some form of vesting. Foundervesting is a “start-up prenuptial agreement”: it defines what happens with equity should someone leave the company. It’s often very unfair to remaining founders if a departing co-founder keeps all of his original equity.
Setting up a legal entity that will have multiple owners from inception (like 2 or more founders) requires good lawyer input. Lawyer time required (including vesting agreements for founders): 3 to 6 hours. Lawyer time required: 1 to 3 hours.
Breakups are hard If you’re going to fall out with your co-founder, do it early, recover the equity into the option pool to keep the company going, and recruit someone else great to fill the missing slot. Build in foundervesting (a.k.a. the “Pre-Nup&# ) to keep the breakup from getting messy.
Vesting Restrictions. The first deadly mistake relates to vesting restrictions. And if the departing founder has a huge chunk of equity, it is unlikely that the company will find many sophisticated angels or VC’s interested in investing. IP Ownership.
One of these norms is how foundervesting and employee vesting works. I won’t get into employee vesting today as that has much more to consider than I have time to cover in this short post today. Here is a good summary post from Cooley GO on FounderVesting. The first is fairly obvious.
Ask the Attorney” – FounderVesting. Our Spreadsheet. Check out the video tour. Charles River Ventures : We back people who want to change the world. Supporter Posts. Scott Edward Walker. This post is part of a new series entitled “Ask the Attorney,” which I am writing for VentureBeat (one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs).
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