During my time trying to raise money in the early 2010’s, investor term sheets were expected to have a number of strings attached — the questions were how many and how onerous were they. Now, with a much more entrepreneur-friendly market and a long bull run, investors have come up with a variety of ways to sweeten the term sheet in an effort to increase the chance of selection by the entrepreneurs.
Here are a few of the sweetener strategies:
- Give the Founders New Stock Options – Every round of funding comes with dilution, often a heavy amount (e.g. 30%+ when an expansion of the stock option pool is factored in). One strategy is to write into the term sheet some level of new stock options for the founders (similar to a refresher grant) such that the financing round dilution is slightly less painful.
- Buy Founder Common Stock – Founders often have the majority of their net worth tied up in the startup. By buying some of the founder’s common stock, the founder gets liquidity and the investor gets a larger ownership position. Win, win.
- Buy Existing Shareholder Common Stock – If certain shareholders have been in the business a long time and/or there’s a substantial step up in valuation, there’s often an appetite to sell a portion of the holdings (much like dollar cost averaging out). The new investors will buy all preferred equity, then have a portion of that new capital buy common stock at 15-20% discount, and retire it. The retired common stock is an effective increase in ownership for all shareholders — common and preferred — such that the new investors gets a larger ownership percentage and existing shareholders don’t get diluted as much (the ones that don’t sell any of their holdings).
As expected, money and ownership percentages are the drivers of these sweeteners. Thankfully, entrepreneurs now have more options and investors are more creative at getting deals done. The next time you see a term sheet, look for the sweeteners.
David Cummings on Startups 