Altgate

The Science & Art of Term Sheet Negotiation

I recently got some comments on a blog post I did a while ago from Yoichiro "Yokum" Taku, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and the blogger behind Startup Company Lawyer, on my post about evaluating one or more term sheets.  By the way, SCL is a great blog and I highly recommend it as a resource.  If you're looking for a quick education on startup legal issues so you can have an efficient conversation with your own attorney, this is the place to go.

Yokum gave me the following feedback:

At first glance, my initial feedback is that you have overvalued the RORFR/Co-sale and (non-cumulative) dividend rights.  All deals have a ROFR/Co-sale and they are rarely invoked as a practical matter.  West coast deals have non-cumulative dividends, which makes a dividend preference meaningless.  Also, I think that the relative weighting of liquidation preference and anti-dilution is a bit off.  I think that liquidation preference is significantly more important than anti-dilution.

This got me thinking that I should repost my original treatise and see what folks think.  So have a read of the below post.  What do you think?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the time I was in the 9th grade, I had been playing chess for a few years (as in I knew the rules) but I didn't play seriously and more often than not I lost.  Then one day at the library (remember, pre-internet) I happened to find a book on chess.  So I read the book and almost overnight I became one of the chess "stars" in high school.  In one of the funnier incidents, I started playing chess during lunch hour and was "hustling" money which on one occasion resulted in a kid pulling a knife on me after I relieved him of a few bucks.  True story.

What was it in that book that allowed me to take advantage of the situation?  Well, there was a lot of basic stuff, some general rules and even some strategy, however, the most useful bit of information, initially, was a table on the relative value of pieces.  You know, a pawn is worth 1, a knight/bishop 3, rook 5, a queen 9 and the king "infinite" unless it's the endgame then it's more like a 4. Experienced players have a "feel" for this from many games played and they can also break the "rules" by, for example, sacrificing a queen for a rook to get better position.  But these are all things learned from experience and best not tried by a novice.  If you are new to the game, you have no idea.  When you are starting out, having some rules of thumb can make all the difference between winning and getting hustled.

What does this have to do with negotiating term sheets?  Well, I think a lot of newbies get hustled when negotiating term sheets because they don't know the relative importance of the various terms.  Have you heard the joke about the VC who says, "I'll let you pick the pre money valuation if I get to pick the terms?"  My goal here is to provide a framework that gives relative value of various terms on a term sheet and allows you to compare them on two dimensions: economics and control (or as my friend Noam Wasserman likes to say, "rich" versus "king"). In the same way that a chess grand master doesn't need rules of thumb from someone else, if you're a seasoned negotiator of term sheets then this is probably equally useless.  And no, this is not based on any academic or scientific study.  It's based on my own experience and, more importantly, that of a few other experts like Dave Kimelberg (Softbank's GC). 

In my view there are 12 important terms on a typical Series A / B term sheet.  Yes there are other terms and yes sometimes they are important, but if you go with the thesis of keep it simple, then 12 is the magic number.  In terms of rating, the rich/king differentiation is important as different people are after different things so depending upon your motivation you may be inclined to pay more attention to one column than the other.  So without further adieu, below is a table showing them as well as the relative importance:

Term	Rich	King
1. Investment / price	10	-
2. Board of directors	-	8
3. Option pool refresh	10	-
4. Preemptive rights	1	3
5. Andi-dilution protection	5	-
6. Registration rights	1	1
7. Drag along rights	1	5
8. Right of first refusal / co-sale	5	-
9. Dividend right	5	-
10. Liquidation preference	7	-
11. Protective provisions	-	8
12. Redemption	1	-

Here a 10 means it is really important to get as favorable a result as possible on this term, a 1 means it is not so important and a "-" means it doesn't apply (i.e. a zero).  The cool thing about having something like this is you can use it as a tool to compare term sheets (provided you can determine how favorable or unfavorable each individual term is...more on that below). 

The next part of this post is to provide a range of typical results for each term which will give you a means to rank each term in each term sheet with a "1,3 or 5" where 1 is "unfavorable", 3 is "fair" and 5 is "favorable."  If you aren't already familiar with the terms in a term sheet, you should check out the model term sheet (basically a template) put together by the National Venture Capital Association. They have other model agreements too, but you will see with the term sheet that they include various options, some discussed here.  Below is a scale for each of the 12 key terms across the two dimensions:

1. Investment/price.  I think there are two ways you can rank price.  One is to rate it relative to your expectation and another is to rate it relative to similar companies (in terms of stage, geography, sector, etc.).  If you don't have comparables, you can fairly easily get them, for example Dow Jones puts out a quarterly survey of VC deal terms which includes pre-money valuation (send me an email if you want a copy).  If you're less than 80% of your benchmark, that's probably unfavorable, if you are within +/- 20% than that's fair and if you're over 120%, then it's favorable.
2. Board of directors.  This term comes down to simple math.  If you give up and don't have control of the board, that's unfavorable, if it's tied, call it fair and if you control it, that is quite favorable.  BTW, the reason I didn't rate the board control a "10" on the "king" scale is because even when you give up control, your board members are bound by fiduciary obligations to the firm, i.e. they can't do whatever they want.
3. Option pool refresh.  Often time this will show up as a separate term in the term sheet, however it is actually just another bite at the apple in terms of price. Traditionally there is a refresh pre-deal so that after the round the company can execute on its hiring plan without needing to expand the pool for 12-18 months.  You will have to develop your hiring budget if you haven't already.  Given that benchmark and your hiring equity budget, I'd say less than 12 months is favorable, 12-18 months is fair and more than 18 months is unfavorable.
4. Preemptive rights.  As you know, preemptive rights give your investor the right to invest in future rounds.  This is of moderate economic value, however you are giving up some control of future financings.  There is remarkably little variation in how this term gets negotiated, probably because of its relatively low importance in the grand scheme.  I'm told the only area that gets negotiated is whether the investor has an "overallotment right" whereby they can take a portion or all of the pro rata of another investor in the same series who didn't participate.  That said, unless something unusual is in your term sheet, it's probably a 1 for rich and 3 for king.
5. Anti-dilution protection. Anti-dilution is a pretty important economic term.  In terms of the range of possibilities, no anti-dilution would be a 5, broad-based weighted average would be a 3 and full-ratchet would be a 1.  I think the vast majority of deals end up as broad-based weighted average. Very few deals avoid it altogether, but it can be done, particularly in later stage or very hot deals.
6. Registration rights.  Reg rights have some economic value and in theory you do give up some control, but in reality they're close to worthless.  You can push on these and most investors will give in when pressed. You can negotiate when the right kicks in and cutbacks.  But bear in mind that investors will love it if you waste time negotiating this because it is not an important term.  Unless something unusual is going on, I'd rate this a 1 on both dimensions.
7. Drag along rights.  Most deals include drag along rights and like many of the other terms, the key is in the voting thresholds.  I rated this a 1/5 on the rich/king scale. In terms of economics the issue is with regard to a sale of the company where the preferred stock, because of special rights, is indifferent to a deal that would be better for Common.  However, the bigger issue is on the control side of the equation where you could get dragged into a sale that you don't want to do.  So in terms of rating both the economic and control sides, I would say that if the thresholds are such that a single investor can unilateral drag along, that's a 1, if it takes 2 or more investors that's a 3 and if it takes investors plus either a neutral party or Common (you) then it's a 5.
8. Right of first refusal / co-sale. I rated this a 5 because this is essentially a "lock-up" on the founders stock which seriously affects liquidity and thus value.  It doesn't really affect control issues.  If you read the actual section of the stock purchase agreement that describes this term it's several pages of bureaucratic procedures for a sale that in the real world you can't imagine ever occurring (which they don't).  As a result, the only real counter party for selling common stock is the other investors or the company with the investors approval and they're all quite likely to low ball.  Unfortunately, I've never heard of avoiding this term completely, so in terms of how to rate it, I'd say that if you can negotiate a right to sell some portion (say 20% on an annual basis) you're at a 5 otherwise if it's a standard lockup then you're at 3.
9. Dividend right.  I rate this a 5 on the economic scale.  In terms of the range, there is no dividend which is a 5, then there is a simple interest dividend which I'd say is a 3 and a 1 would be a compounding dividend.  For some reason, the dividend rate has been 8% ever since I've seen term sheets.  You can negotiate the rate, but the bigger battle is whether you pay a dividend and how the rate compounds. 
10. Liquidation preference.  This is a very important economic term that doesn't have any importance in terms of control.  The issue here is during a sale, how do investors get paid out.  I'd say about 1/3 of deals have a preference at 1X but no participation, another 1/3 have a preference with a cap and participation and the balance a preference with no cap plus participation and that's pretty much how I'd rate it, i.e. 5 for 1X preference/no participation, 3 if with a cap in the 2-4X range and 1 if with no cap and participation.
11. Protective provisions.  This is very important from a control perspective but not so economically. While there are a ton of these protective provisions, the key ones relate to sale/merger of the company and future rounds of financing. As with other control rights, the key is in the voting thresholds so I'd assess this the same as 7 (drag along rights).
12. Redemption.  Finally, we get to number twelve, redemption rights.  This is an almost worthless economic right.  I've never seen or heard of this being exercised and most investors will acquiesce if you push on this.  Unless you see something unusual, I'd rate this a 3.

Ultimately the individual rating combined with the overall importance of each term will allow you to create a weighted average total for each term sheet on both the rich and king dimensions.  While you wouldn't want to make a decision to take an investment on this alone, it will give you a basic idea of where the strengths and weaknesses of particular term sheets lie.  It also gives some tips for negotiating.  For example, you don't want to waste your time negotiating redemption rights and attorney's fees and instead, you want to go to the core of what's important to you on the rich/king scale.

Finally, I'd love to hear feedback from folks.  How would you change the ratings?  Are their other key terms?  Feel free to comment on this post or send me email.

Venture Capital Is Changing

This is something you wouldn't have seen from a VC even a few years ago.  Kudos to Altos Ventures for cutting against the grain.  While they might risk leaving some money on the table by supporting a founder "too long" I'm sure they'll more than make up for it by endearing themselves to entrepreneurs and better deal flow.

How (Not) To Pitch VCs

I haven't read this blog before, but Patrick Lor has a great post on how not to pitch VCs (and by inference, how to).  Having seen a couple hundred pitches in the past year, I have to totally agree...most pitches suck.  Great advice, Patrick...and it's not just that you use the same TypePad theme as I do!

Regulation D

Here's an interesting blog post on Reg D and how it affects announcing (or not) news of investment in your company.  They give an example of how Twitter announced today their latest round of investment, but that anyone could have searched the SEC database and seen that the round closed on June 9th.  I guess the moral of the story is to pay attention to that stack of papers you sign at closing!

Why Dividends Matter

Somehow when you see that little clause on the term sheet about an 8% dividend for the preferred shares, it doesn't seem that big of a deal at the time.  But to put it in perspective, let's take a typical "success" story and see how that dividend affects the deal.

Imagine a scenario where a startup raises $14.5MM in 4 rounds (seed plus A, B and C) and that each round has the 8% compounding dividend paid on exit.  Further, let's imagine the company sells for $75MM.  Here's the cash flow:

Date	Cashflow
Year 1	-500
Year 2	-2000
Year 3	-5000
Year 4	-7000
Year 5	0
Year 6	0
Year 7	75000

In this scenario, the dividend results in an extra $4.9MM paid to the preferred shares which is about 6% of the sale economics.  So the way to think about this little term is whether you want to give a 6% vig to your investor.

How Liquidation Preferences Work

Liquidation preferences are a key term in the definition of preferred stock (it's generally acknowledged to be the second most important economic term).  Earlier, I wrote about this and other terms in a post on negotiating a term sheet, but here I want to give some specific examples to illustrate why this is such an important term.

You probably already know this, but it's worth repeating that liquidation preference refers to the procedure for paying investors off in a sale or winding up of the company.  It typically includes two components: a preference (which is an amount that gets paid before others) and participation (the ability to "double dip").  Many folks have written on preferences in terms of definitions, so instead I'm going to give some simple examples.

For simplicity sake, imagine a VC has $10MM invested in one class of preferred stock in a company, owns 40% and the company is sold for $50MM. Here’s how the three different scenarios in my previous post work (in a specific example):

(1) 1x preference w/ no participation. In this case, the VC has the choice to take $10MM (their 1x preference) or to convert to common and take $20MM (40% of the $50MM). Obviously, they’d want to do the latter. You might ask, what’s the value of the preference? Well, imagine if the company were sold for $15MM—in that case the VC would take the $10MM preference which would mean they really own 75% of the economics (not the 40% shown on the cap table).

(2) 1x preference capped at 2x with participation. In that case, the VC would get $10MM off the top (1x preference) and then get 40% of the rest (or $16MM) but here the cap kicks in so instead of getting the extra $16MM, the VC would get only an additional $10MM for a total of $20MM (or 2x).  It's helpful to look at a table of outcomes here:

Sale	As Preferred	As Common
10	10	4
20	14	8
30	18	12
35	20	14
40	20	16
50	20	20
60	20	24
70	20	28
80	20	32
90	20	36
100	20	40

The first column is the sale price, the second is the the value to the VC "as preferred" and the right column is the value to the VC if they convert to common (which they always have an option to do).  You'll see how the cap creates a "donut hole" where the VC receives the same amount whether the company is sold for $35MM or $50MM (because the VC would convert to common in any sale over $50MM). 

(3) 1x preference with participation and no cap. In this case, the VC gets $10MM off the top, then they convert to common and get 40% of the rest (or $16MM) for a total of $26MM. In this case, the VC gets 52% as opposed to the 40% shown on the cap table. You can see with this simple example how the liquidation preference can add substantial returns for investors (which all comes out of the pocket of common).

So my view is that, no participation is the best option for common, followed by a cap and the worst deal is the no cap participation scenario. 

Lastly, I would like to give a caveat on the cap scenario which is that the donut hole sometimes creates an unwelcome incentive. Imagine in the above example if there were two deals on the table: one for $35MM in cash and another for $35MM in cash plus a $15MM earn out. Further, imagine that the $35MM all cash deal is slightly more likely to close.  In that scenario, the VC would be inclined to take the lower priced deal (remember they get paid the same in both scenario) but common would probably go for the higher deal. 

Enough Already!

I have to believe some VCs are buying these t-shirts from vcwear if for no other reason than I keep getting emails about it.  Here's the beauty of it though...the shirts sell for $100!

I think a lot of entrepreneurs are secretly chuckling to themselves. 

Here's a tip.  You can go here and make a t-shirt with any phrase on it you want and it cost $20 (including $5 shipping)!

LOL.

How To Raise Money From VCs

This guy is funny!  He's the Gary Snoman of 2008!  There are a lot of nuggets here on raising VC...my favorite is #3, "when VCs understand something they like to say that it'll never work [so] the less understandable you are the more attractive you are!"

The Science & Art of Term Sheet Negotiation

By the time I was in the 9th grade, I had been playing chess for a few years (as in I knew the rules) but I didn't play seriously and more often than not I lost.  Then one day at the library (remember, pre-internet) I happened to find a book on chess.  So I read the book and almost overnight I became one of the chess "stars" in high school.  In one of the funnier incidents, I started playing chess during lunch hour and was "hustling" money which on one occasion resulted in a kid pulling a knife on me after I relieved him of a few bucks.  True story.

What was it in that book that allowed me to take advantage of the situation?  Well, there was a lot of basic stuff, some general rules and even some strategy, however, the most useful bit of information, initially, was a table on the relative value of pieces.  You know, a pawn is worth 1, a knight/bishop 3, rook 5, a queen 9 and the king "infinite" unless it's the endgame then it's more like a 4.  Experienced players have a "feel" for this from many games played and they can also break the "rules" by, for example, sacrificing a queen for a rook to get better position.  But these are all things learned from experience and best not tried by a novice.  If you are new to the game, you have no idea.  When you are starting out, having some rules of thumb can make all the difference between winning and getting hustled.

What does this have to do with negotiating term sheets?  Well, I think a lot of newbies get hustled when negotiating term sheets because they don't know the relative importance of the various terms.  Have you heard the joke about the VC who says, "I'll let you pick the pre money valuation if I get to pick the terms?"  My goal here is to provide a framework that gives relative value of various terms on a term sheet and allows you to compare them on two dimensions: economics and control (or as my friend Noam Wasserman likes to say, "rich" versus "king").  In the same way that a chess grand master doesn't need rules of thumb from someone else, if you're a seasoned negotiator of term sheets then this is probably equally useless.  And no, this is not based on any academic or scientific study.  It's based on my own experience and, more importantly, that of a few other experts like Dave Kimelberg (Softbank's GC). 

In my view there are 12 important terms on a typical Series A / B term sheet.  Yes there are other terms and yes sometimes they are important, but if you go with the thesis of keep it simple, then 12 is the magic number.  In terms of rating, the rich/king differentiation is important as different people are after different things so depending upon your motivation you may be inclined to pay more attention to one column than the other.  So without further adieu, below is a table showing them as well as the relative importance:

Term	Rich	King
1. Investment / price	10	-
2. Board of directors	-	8
3. Option pool refresh	10	-
4. Preemptive rights	1	3
5. Andi-dilution protection	5	-
6. Registration rights	1	1
7. Drag along rights	1	5
8. Right of first refusal / co-sale	5	-
9. Dividend right	5	-
10. Liquidation preference	7	-
11. Protective provisions	-	8
12. Redemption	1	-

Here a 10 means it is really important to get as favorable a result as possible on this term, a 1 means it is not so important and a "-" means it doesn't apply (i.e. a zero).  The cool thing about having something like this is you can use it as a tool to compare term sheets (provided you can determine how favorable or unfavorable each individual term is...more on that below). 

The next part of this post is to provide a range of typical results for each term which will give you a means to rank each term in each term sheet with a "1,3 or 5" where 1 is "unfavorable", 3 is "fair" and 5 is "favorable."  If you aren't already familiar with the terms in a term sheet, you should check out the model term sheet (basically a template) put together by the National Venture Capital Association.  They have other model agreements too, but you will see with the term sheet that they include various options, some discussed here.  Below is a scale for each of the 12 key terms across the two dimensions:

1. Investment/price.  I think there are two ways you can rank price.  One is to rate it relative to your expectation and another is to rate it relative to similar companies (in terms of stage, geography, sector, etc.).  If you don't have comparables, you can fairly easily get them, for example Dow Jones puts out a quarterly survey of VC deal terms which includes pre-money valuation (send me an email if you want a copy).  If you're less than 80% of your benchmark, that's probably unfavorable, if you are within +/- 20% than that's fair and if you're over 120%, then it's favorable.
2. Board of directors.  This term comes down to simple math.  If you give up and don't have control of the board, that's unfavorable, if it's tied, call it fair and if you control it, that is quite favorable.  BTW, the reason I didn't rate the board control a "10" on the "king" scale is because even when you give up control, your board members are bound by fiduciary obligations to the firm, i.e. they can't do whatever they want.
3. Option pool refresh.  Often time this will show up as a separate term in the term sheet, however it is actually just another bite at the apple in terms of price.  Traditionally there is a refresh pre-deal so that after the round the company can execute on its hiring plan without needing to expand the pool for 12-18 months.  You will have to develop your hiring budget if you haven't already.  Given that benchmark and your hiring equity budget, I'd say less than 12 months is favorable, 12-18 months is fair and more than 18 months is unfavorable.
4. Preemptive rights.  As you know, preemptive rights give your investor the right to invest in future rounds.  This is of moderate economic value, however you are giving up some control of future financings.  There is remarkably little variation in how this term gets negotiated, probably because of its relatively low importance in the grand scheme.  I'm told the only area that gets negotiated is whether the investor has an "overallotment right" whereby they can take a portion or all of the pro rata of another investor in the same series who didn't participate.  That said, unless something unusual is in your term sheet, it's probably a 1 for rich and 3 for king.
5. Anti-dilution protection.  Anti-dilution is a pretty important economic term.  In terms of the range of possibilities, no anti-dilution would be a 5, broad-based weighted average would be a 3 and full-ratchet would be a 1.  I think the vast majority of deals end up as broad-based weighted average.  Very few deals avoid it altogether, but it can be done, particularly in later stage or very hot deals.
6. Registration rights.  Reg rights have some economic value and in theory you do give up some control, but in reality they're close to worthless.  You can push on these and most investors will give in when pressed. You can negotiate when the right kicks in and cutbacks.  But bear in mind that investors will love it if you waste time negotiating this because it is not an important term.  Unless something unusual is going on, I'd rate this a 1 on both dimensions.
7. Drag along rights.  Most deals include drag along rights and like many of the other terms, the key is in the voting thresholds.  I rated this a 1/5 on the rich/king scale.  In terms of economics the issue is with regard to a sale of the company where the preferred stock, because of special rights, is indifferent to a deal that would be better for Common.  However, the bigger issue is on the control side of the equation where you could get dragged into a sale that you don't want to do.  So in terms of rating both the economic and control sides, I would say that if the thresholds are such that a single investor can unilateral drag along, that's a 1, if it takes 2 or more investors that's a 3 and if it takes investors plus either a neutral party or Common (you) then it's a 5.
8. Right of first refusal / co-sale.  I rated this a 5 because this is essentially a "lock-up" on the founders stock which seriously affects liquidity and thus value.  It doesn't really affect control issues.  If you read the actual section of the stock purchase agreement that describes this term it's several pages of bureaucratic procedures for a sale that in the real world you can't imagine ever occurring (which they don't).  As a result, the only real counter party for selling common stock is the other investors or the company with the investors approval and they're all quite likely to low ball.  Unfortunately, I've never heard of avoiding this term completely, so in terms of how to rate it, I'd say that if you can negotiate a right to sell some portion (say 20% on an annual basis) you're at a 5 otherwise if it's a standard lockup then you're at 3.
9. Dividend right.  I rate this a 5 on the economic scale.  In terms of the range, there is no dividend which is a 5, then there is a simple interest dividend which I'd say is a 3 and a 1 would be a compounding dividend.  For some reason, the dividend rate has been 8% ever since I've seen term sheets.  You can negotiate the rate, but the bigger battle is whether you pay a dividend and how the rate compounds. 
10. Liquidation preference.  This is a very important economic term that doesn't have any importance in terms of control.  The issue here is during a sale, how do investors get paid out.  I'd say about 1/3 of deals have a preference at 1X but no participation, another 1/3 have a preference with a cap and participation and the balance a preference with no cap plus participation and that's pretty much how I'd rate it, i.e. 5 for 1X preference/no participation, 3 if with a cap in the 2-4X range and 1 if with no cap and participation.
11. Protective provisions.  This is very important from a control perspective but not so economically.  While there are a ton of these protective provisions, the key ones relate to sale/merger of the company and future rounds of financing.  As with other control rights, the key is in the voting thresholds so I'd assess this the same as 7 (drag along rights).
12. Redemption.  Finally, we get to number twelve, redemption rights.  This is an almost worthless economic right.  I've never seen or heard of this being exercised and most investors will acquiesce if you push on this.  Unless you see something unusual, I'd rate this a 3.

Ultimately the individual rating combined with the overall importance of each term will allow you to create a weighted average total for each term sheet on both the rich and king dimensions.  While you wouldn't want to make a decision to take an investment on this alone, it will give you a basic idea of where the strengths and weaknesses of particular term sheets lie.  It also gives some tips for negotiating.  For example, you don't want to waste your time negotiating redemption rights and attorney's fees and instead, you want to go to the core of what's important to you on the rich/king scale.

Finally, I'd love to hear feedback from folks.  How would you change the ratings?  Are their other key terms?  Feel free to comment on this post or send me email.

Warm Calling

Brad Feld posted about a company that sent him a video elevator pitch which he put on this blog.  It's very well done.  There is also a site Vator.TV which helps manage video pitches ("Vator" is short for "Elevator").  This is a great way to turn a cold call into a warm one.  It is not intrusive, it is asynchronous and the fact that it is multi-media makes it so much richer than a phone call or an email.

I also like the fact that it has a built in "delivery receipt notification" as well as tracks to whom the note was forwarded and when it was watched.

Every company pitching for VC money should put together a video elevator pitch.