NOTE: This is the eighteenth post in our series about standard terms in early stage equity financings. These posts refer to the model Series A Term Sheet put out by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and available for download here. * * * * * * * * * *. Tags: Anatomy of a Term Sheet Financing MORE >>

Terms and term sheets are a necessary evil of the venture business but most venture returns don't come from terms. The rest of the portfolio might return it again and if you can do 3x gross, you'll raise another fund, and another, and another. Go read it. The VC world is changing. That's progress. MORE >>

There are three main issues: Onerous terms and performance metrics. Tenuous relationship with rest of firm. strategic investors investors fund raising startups term sheets signaling mergers acquisitionsIn my post on non-investors investing in startups , I neglected to discuss strategic investors.  MORE >>

Granted, getting the first domino to topple is usually the most difficult part of the game-- as a rough proxy, plan on spending 80% of your time and effort closing Investor #1, and the remaining 20% locking down the rest. As needed, be ready to offer sweetheart terms to the first person to take the plunge. To wit: 1. function. Clever. MORE >>

As one simple example, we might estimate the cost in terms of the number of man-hours of programming required to write a comparably-functional software program. The level of interest in a deal is the single most important factor influencing valuation (and for that matter, for negotiating everything else on the term sheet). MORE >>