It has been a while since I put up a term sheet post so I thought I’d tackle a hard one today. While it’s fun to tease lawyers about math (and – actually – about anything), my co-author on this series Jason Mendelson (a lawyer) often reminds me that lawyers can do basic arithmetic (and […]

As Jason and I continue to wind our way through a typical VC term sheet, we thought we’d tackle the infamous “drag-along agreement.”  This is one of those terms that has recently increased in importance to VCs due to the all the financing and exit dynamics that occurred during the downturn of 2001 – 2003.  A […]

As Jason and I continue to work our way through a typical venture capital term sheet, we encounter another key control term – the “protective provisions.”  Protective provisions are effectively veto rights that investors have on certain actions by the company.  Not surprisingly, these provisions protect the VC (unfortunately, not from himself.) The protective provisions are […]

In our series of posts on Term Sheets, Jason and I thought we’d take on a relatively easy one today.  In our previous posts on Price and Liquidation Preferences, we discussed the key economic terms that VCs care about.  In this post, we tackle one of the two primary “control terms” that matter to VCs. VCs […]

I’ve written about liquidation preferences (and participating preferred) before, as have most of the other VC bloggers (and several entrepreneur bloggers.) However, for completeness, and since liquidation preferences are the second most important “economic term” (after price), Jason and I decided to write a post on it. Plus – if you read carefully – you […]

A the end of the year, I completed a financing that was much more difficult than it needed to be. As Jason Mendelson (our general counsel) and I were whining to each other we decided to do something about it. At the risk of giving away more super-top-secret VC magic tricks, we’ve decided to co-author […]

Recently, several entrepreneurs and investors have asserted to me that they don’t think the terms on a convertible debt deal matter much. I was perplexed by the statement and asked each of them to tell me more. In every case, the person hadn’t really thought through the issues. Rather, they were just spouting what they […]

Fred Wilson has a nice post up titled The Ideal First Round Term Sheet.  In it he describes the process of closing a financing using a standard set of Series A terms from Gunderson that he agreed to as part of the term sheet.  In this case, the VC (Fred’s firm – Union Square Ventures) […]

There have been many different language translations of Venture Deals since it was first published in 2012. The first German translation of Venture Deals 4e is out, and Florian Kreis did an amazing job. Florian aimed to modify the book as little as possible, even if the relevant passages did not correspond 100% to German […]