SAFE terms comparison table
Every SAFE on your cap table in one place: cap, discount, amount, and what each converts into.
Spreadsheet
SAFEs and terms · Checklist
Term sheet red-flag checklist
The terms worth stopping on, as a list to run before you sign anything.
The point of reading a term sheet closely is not to negotiate every sentence. It is to find the provisions that change ownership, future financing options, operating control, or your ability to walk away — and to know which of those you are agreeing to before you agree to it.
A headline valuation can look attractive while other terms quietly change the practical result underneath it. This list is the places that happens. Tick an item when you could explain the provision and its consequence to a cofounder in plain language, not when you have read it.
Anything you cannot tick is a question for counsel, not a reason to panic. Uncertainty about a clause is a reason to model it and ask — never a reason to accept it because another company used similar language.
Checklist
What is in it
Economics · 6 items
What the deal does to ownership, in the good outcome and the modest one.
Control · 3 items
Reviewed separately from the economics, because they trade against each other.
What is binding now · 4 items
Some of a term sheet takes effect the moment it is signed.
The cap table, modelled · 3 items
Not the headline number. The number after everything else is included.
Founder protections · 3 items
The terms that apply to you rather than to the company.
Closing conditions · 2 items
The facts and approvals that stand between signing and cash.
What it does to the next round · 2 items
The terms you are agreeing to outlive this financing.
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How to use it
Notes
Take the unticked items to counsel with the term sheet, the current cap table, prior SAFEs or notes, and a written list of your actual business priorities — preserving operating control, avoiding an unworkable pool, keeping reporting manageable, keeping the next financing practical. Trade-offs should be made explicitly rather than discovered later in a document nobody fully read. And do not sign because an investor says the terms are standard, or under a deadline that arrived before your understanding did.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
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