Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

For some time Jason and I have felt that VC’s have had an unfair advantage when it comes to understanding term sheets. So a few years back we wrote a whole series of blog posts (the Term Sheet series ) which became the basis for the book Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist.

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Ben's Blog

JUNE 22, 2019

a16z Managing Parter Scott Kupor’s new book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road , is a guide to engaging with and understanding VC that covers everything from terminology and term sheets to the fundraising process, governance, and more. In this video, …

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Term Sheet Government Video Management 58

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We received so much positive feedback from our This Week in Venture Capital show walking through valuation calculations & term sheets that we decided to do a Q&A show this week to address topics that entrepreneurs want to learn about. Q: “If you have a term sheet on the table how should you leverage with other VCs?&#

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Venture Capital Term Sheet Valuation Stock Options 282

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

When I first read Paul Graham’s blog post on “High Resolution&# Financing I read it as a treatise arguing that convertible notes are better than equity. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis Term Sheets. Photo credit: D. Blanchard/O’Reilly Media. Violent agreement.

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Finance Term Sheet Technical Review Warrant 286

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

As an entrepreneur, your goal when raising financing is to get several term sheets — the documents describing the terms and conditions of financing. You can comment thoughtfully on their blog posts, offer suggestions, interact, and follow the best rule of developing relationships: ‘Give more than you get.’

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Version One Ventures

MARCH 3, 2021

Take the time to craft a blog post on the mission of your company and the product you’re developing. You may want to share your own blog post (see #1) to provide more context. If they blog frequently (like we do!), Fortune Term Sheet. First thing: your blog post should go live. Founder’s announcement.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 28, 2010

On the heels of all the noise around Groupon’s $ 100m financing at a $7.5b (billion) post valuation, I thought I’d put out a call for “old VC term sheets – prior to 1990.&#. The basis for the book comes from the Term Sheet series that Jason and I wrote on this blog in 2005.

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Term Sheet Search Finance Valuation 118

Hunter Walker

APRIL 20, 2014

And your term sheet waits at the bottom. Just repeat their words back to them, such as “As you blogged, we too see connected home as the next trillion dollar opportunity.” Still lots of hard work and good fortune to close the deal, but your term sheet is right on the other side.' If so, great!

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Brad on blogging. How did you start blogging? “My My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level.

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Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2010

He had followed me on Twitter and sent me a nice message about my blog. So when I saw the merely mortal Tristan with a normal sized Twitter following I clicked through to his link, saw his blog, saw that he was a second year at Stanford and just thought, “hey, he seems like an interesting guy. before having 300k followers!).

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Social Network Networking Southern California Term Sheet 347

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

This also appears as a guest post at Fortune’s Term Sheet. At the end of the process, which ran into the fall of 2003, we received term sheets from two firms and had a third which expressed interest in participating though not leading the round. How To Think About The Future. May 26, 2011. It was a $4.7M Thanks Lee.

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Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

By September 26th we had submitted a term sheet which was signed on October 4th and financing was closed in less than 30 days. But since I have a blog and the history of my falling in love with Andrew & Petri’s vision was public and is relevant to how we make decisions I wanted a chance to tell all of their stories.

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Technical Review North America Los Angeles Cofounder 373

Gust

JULY 25, 2012

Fred Wilson of Union Ventures writes Entrepreneurs Have Control When Things Work, VCs Have Control When They Don’t on his AVC blog. Whether we’re founders or investors, we focus on terms and percentages as determining control. This is one of those ideas that seem completely obvious but only after I’ve heard them.

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Term Sheet Founder Hiring Entrepreneur 105

Gust

MAY 22, 2012

We have a standard term sheet as a starting point. We’ve never seen that term sheet survive negotiations all the way through signing, but it’s usually a good start. That’s worked out very well for us, which is part of the reason I blog on this site regularly. . We like the local connection. .

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Technical Review Oregon Due Diligence Term Sheet 111

Diego Basch

FEBRUARY 28, 2012

We could have insisted on a term sheet, even though term sheets are non-binding. I believe the startup should have pushed for the term sheet as soon as possible. Either the acquirer would have said no (end of story right there), or the sheet would have been signed.

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Term Sheet Redemption Acquisition Reputation 56

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

As Mark Suster pointed out yesterday on his blog , he's seeing more and more cases where "entrepreneurs are working hard to make sure they have as many VC names and famous angels on their cap table for signaling value." Tip 4: Really Understand Key Terms. Once you get the term sheet make sure you know how to read it.

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Cap Table Term Sheet Liquidation Preference Technical Review 125

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Ability to Pivot – I don’t like to invest in people that I’ve never met before who come through my office wanting to have a term sheet within 30 days. Yes, there is the mythical company you all heard about that walked into Sequoia and had a term sheet 24 hours later. I’m sure that happens.

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Entrepreneur Term Sheet Early Stage Affiliate 291

Tim Keane

MAY 16, 2010

A philosophy of valuations and term-sheets. Several months ago, I'd posted an article about term-sheets.  A Philosophy of Valuation and  Term Sheet Calcs   the accompanying spreadsheet.  A philosophy of valuations and term-sheets. Subscribe to this blogs feed.

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Term Sheet Valuation Wisconsin Angel Investor 60

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

The Mattermark Daily consists of both original content from the company’s blog and a hand-curated list of featured posts from various investors, founders, and media members covering the startup ecosystem. Featured posts in CrunchBase Daily , StrictlyVC , and Dan Primack’s Term Sheet
. Medium – Venture Capital
.

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Curation RSS Term Sheet Technical Review 120

View from Seed

MAY 17, 2019

There are two distinct chapters to venture fundraising – the first is entrepreneurs pitching their startup to multiple firms to generate interest and ultimately secure a term sheet; then, the period after a term sheet has been signed progressing to close.

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Term Sheet Reputation Security Conversion 149

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If an investor isn’t engaging then they’re not suddenly going to get a term sheet. If we feel a mutual connection then my goal is to make your life easier by offering you a term sheet before you’re even raising and I’ll spend the time and effort trying to prove that it isn’t worth running a process.

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Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

My goal in the interview overall was to capture more of the personal side of Fred since so much of his investment thesis and portfolio work already comes out in his blog. Blogging is like Venus Fly Paper. I have been blogging for years – even before BothSidesofTheTable. This is classic Fred.

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Term Sheet Video 150

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 16, 2021

When Jason and I wrote the first edition Venture Deals in 2011, we built off a series of 30+ blog posts we wrote in 2005 about Term Sheets. I’ve been writing privately about it a lot but have now crossed over into a zone where I feel like writing more publicly about it.

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Term Sheet Finance Web Entrepreneur 151

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2013

4 A/B Testing Mistakes That Can Kill Your Business – And How to Avoid Them | KISSMetrics Blog – [link]. 4 A/B Testing Mistakes That Can Kill Your Business – And How to Avoid Them | KISSMetrics Blog – [link]. A founder-friendly term sheet – [link]. Making the Leap: Old Career to New! – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

View from Seed

MAY 31, 2023

Digging deeper into the topic, I was inspired to learn of the stories founders shared through blogs and interviews as they closed down their companies and refocused on starting their next ventures. One particularly awe-inspiring and gut-wrenching reflection is from Mike Gozzo, who penned “ My Start-Up has 30 Days To Live.”

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Silicon Valley Cofounder Term Sheet Founder 156

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

There, I said it; right there in the title of the blog post. For most VCs once a term sheet is signed, getting through diligence and legal is a chore, and not the most fun part of the job. I have yet to ever see a deal where the investor counsel expenses came in significantly lower than the agreed to cap in the term sheet.

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Term Sheet Due Diligence Stock Early Stage 114

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

But why don’t you just give me the damn term sheet you promised so I can trust you even more. And you can’t go around telling all of your employees your deepest insecurities about it or you’ll soon have no more of said employees. Yeah, I trust you. You have secret doubts about your co-founder. She seems depressed.

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View from Seed

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

The classic scenario is when a VC has a signed term sheet to lead a round, but has left room open for another meaningful investor. In other words, by the time the term sheet is signed, everyone else in the syndicate is already known and have been talking to the founder already.

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Syndicate Syndication Term Sheet Cofounder 207

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2011

There were no explanations for all of the confusing details outlined in a term sheet. He gave me the human explanation for what the term meant. But know that every term in your term sheet is there as a result of some dispute of the past between shareholders or between shareholders & management.

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Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Cap Table Participating Preferred 304

Startup Company Lawyer

APRIL 22, 2009

Always looking for ways to better serve the entrepreneurial community, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is pleased to announce the release of the WSGR Term Sheet Generator , a publicly available online tool that allows entrepreneurs and investors to generate an initial draft of a term sheet for a preferred stock financing.

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Term Sheet Finance Preferred Stock Kentucky 39

Up and Running

JANUARY 26, 2012

Venture Capitalist, Mark Suster suggests in his blog post ‘ How do you reference check a VC ’ that: ‘First, I would say that most entrepreneurs do almost no reference checks or at least do them very informally. Finally you need to be very clear on the terms of the investment i.e. above and beyond the headline rates.

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Term Sheet Exit Strategy Software Review Early Stage 94

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Womble Bond Dickinson has released a white paper on Performance Aligned Stock and a term sheet on ImpactTerms.org. . (If That said, John Berger observes, “I can easily make a low-risk, debt-like Flexible VC deal, or a high-risk equity-like deal, and I can do it using the same term sheet with different terms.

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Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2018

In 2017 we began inserting an “Inclusion Clause” into our term sheets because we believe that the culture one establishes at the earliest stages of one’s business will set out the course of how it will grow and develop. We believe that diverse teams produce diversity of thought and that this leads to better decisions and outcomes.

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Term Sheet Los Angeles Open Source Portfolio 284

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

It is essential to understand the funding structure stated in your term sheet and the advantages and disadvantages it may have for your business. Please feel free to check out my blog, Arnab Ray’s Blog — I have additional information there about the startup ecosystem.

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Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

I was speaking to the former CFO of one of our most valuable portfolio companies the other day, and she recounted how this company once pitched 70 investors to barely get a term sheet.

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IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 205

Altgate

AUGUST 20, 2010

-King&# Approach to Term Sheet Negotiations Posted on August 20, 2010 by fnazeeri I feel like I’m in that scene from The Jerk where Steve Martin sees his name in the phone book and exclaims, “I’m somebody!&# I’m published (sorta)! Bookmark the permalink. ← Why Don’t Universities Teach Sales?

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Term Sheet Venture Capital Angel Financing Framework 39

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 17, 2013

Write a blog post. Understand a term sheet. Develop and track a funnel. Make decisions off cohort tracking. Become a Google analytics expert. Deliver a keynote. Build Links. Conduct customer interviews. Segment a market. Recruit and Train. Train an intern. Hire A Players. Replace B Players. Cold call C level executives.

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Advisory Board Balance Sheet Term Sheet Entrepreneur 279