Consulting Agreement Example Template

It is common for entrepreneurial teams to work with consultants to gain access to specialized skills and information.  Early stage teams try and remain small with minimal employment commitments until the product and company reach a certain level of maturity and development.  

Private Equity Term Sheet Tutorial

We have covered a number of financing vehicles that are commonly used by startups at the seed stage; namely the convertible note, safe investment, and to a lesser extent promissory notes.   Companies that have progressed beyond their seed investment and are ready to raise a venture round will do so by issuing preferred stock.

Promissory Note Example Template

We get a lot of questions from entrepreneurs about how to create a simple financial loan instrument for friends and family.  As mentioned in the Make It Big book, these are commonly done using Promissory Notes.  This post discusses the basics and presents a template for use. 

Distribution Agreement Example Template

As mentioned in the book “Make It Big, Crossing the Entrepreneur’s Gap,” distribution partners are a major part of scaling up the startup.  Entrepreneurs typically start on distribution in phases (local, regional, national, international) in whatever order makes sense.  The distribution

Convertible Note Example

Funding from startup to scale up happens in stages as noted in the book “Make It Big, Crossing the Entrepreneur’s Gap.”  Different types of companies have different types of funding options.  Hobby and lifestyle companies bootstrap and often use friends and family funding as noted in the related post on promissory notes.  Those companies that have a view toward equity funding overtime often start with a convertible note.  

Nondisclosure Agreement Example (NDA)

As mentioned in the Make It Big book, a mutual nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is useful for protecting intellectual property.  The book reviewed both one way and mutual nondisclosure agreements.  The NDA below is a mutual NDA.  Note that the “Confidential Information” term covers the areas discussed in the book. 

Safe Spreadsheet for Y-Combinator Safe Primer Examples

In December 2013, Y-Combinator announced the Safe, a Replacement for Convertible Notes via their terrific blog post written by Paul Graham.   In short the “Simple agreement for future equity” (Safe) was created by Y-Combinator partner (and lawyer) Carolynn Levy is a

Beta Agreement Example

Testing a product with customers is a necessary step prior to finalizing a design for launch.  Once a startup has what they believe to be a stable product, they will often provide it to some ‘test’ customers in order to gather feedback.