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Revisiting Paul Graham’s “High Resolution” Financing

Both Sides of the Table

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. “A startup could also give better deals to investors they expected to help them most&# – That is a quote from Paul on the “high resolution financing&# post.

Finance 286
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Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups

SoCal CTO

Paul Graham provides what is roughly the core formula for equity at any point in The Equity Equation : You can use the same formula when giving stock to employees, but it works in the other direction. Stock vests for 4 years. the better the startup will be. Is it Time for You to Earn or to Learn? you won the lottery). Wait a second.

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What Do Boards Actually Do?

Both Sides of the Table

ICOs certainly have a place in startup financing. Executives run the day-to-day so often the board is more involved as a sparring partner at key intervals. The administrative work we actually do at board meetings?

Cofounder 217
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How do the sample Series Seed financing documents differ from typical Series A financing documents?

Startup Company Lawyer

After the recent announcement of the Series Seed Financing documents by Marc Andreesen, Brad Feld points out that there are now four sets of “open source&# equity seed financing documents: TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents (by Cooley). Y Combinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents (by WSGR). under $500K).

Finance 70
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Who Should be on Your Startup Board?

Both Sides of the Table

If angel investors are pressuring you to set up a board and if you don’t have the leverage to push back a little then I might suggest a 3-person board in which all 3 seats are appointed by the common stock and you agree to appoint one of these seats to the angel investor but perhaps make it either time based or event based.

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Introducing the Cap Table and Hiring the CTO

Feld Thoughts

As Finance Fridays continues, we are introducing the concept of the Cap Table. They come up with two options: Hire Praveena as an employee and offer her stock options. Bring Praveena in as a founder and offer 10-20% of the company as stock. Hopefully you are staying with us and finding this useful – feedback welcome!

Cap Table 133
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What do you give up when you take outside investors?

Berkonomics

To protect against such an event, almost every professional investor includes a clause in the investment documents which allow the investor to “put” the stock back to the company after five years, requiring the company to pay back the investment plus dividends accrued during the term of the investment. Draconian terms?