Templates and resources
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14 resources
Equity and people
- Founder vesting scheduleFour years, one-year cliff, modelled per founder with the decisions to settle beside it. Vesting protects whoever stays, and the founder who argues hardest against it is describing the outcome it prevents.XLSX · Sign in to download · Idea, Prototype, Pre-seed
- Advisory board agreementWhat to settle before offering equity to an advisor, the usual range, and the filter that catches most relationships which do not work out.PDF · Sign in to download · Idea, Prototype, Pre-seed
- Offer letter with an equity promiseHow to word a grant you cannot make yet. Writing a percentage with nothing else is the promise that becomes a dispute.PDF · Sign in to download · Idea, Prototype, Pre-seed, Seed
- Equity incentive planThe master document that creates the option pool and the rules every grant runs on. How to size it from the hiring plan rather than from a convention.PDF · Sign in to download · Pre-seed, Seed
- Stock option grant paperworkGrant agreement, notice of grant and exercise notice, plus which option type each person can receive and why it depends on status rather than seniority.PDF · Sign in to download · Pre-seed, Seed, Series A
- Option grant registerOne row per grant, with the valuation it was priced against and the date. A register rebuilt from emails eighteen months later is how share counts stop matching the cap table.XLSX · Sign in to download · Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+
- Employment paperwork checklistWhat every employee and every contractor must have signed, and the status question that is assessed on how the work actually happens rather than on what the contract calls it.DOCX · Sign in to download · Seed, Series A
- Independent valuation for option pricingWhy the exercise price needs an independent appraisal, when it expires, and why getting it wrong lands on your employees rather than on the company.PDF · Sign in to download · Series A, Series B+
- Post-termination exercise window policyNinety days is standard and can mean four years of work is lost for want of cash in three months. The trade-off, and what makes a policy real rather than a trap.DOCX · Sign in to download · Series A, Series B+
- Cap table migration checklistMoving off the spreadsheet before a round rather than during one. Clean first, because the system will faithfully reproduce whatever you load.DOCX · Sign in to download · Series A, Series B+
- Headcount planEvery role with its fully loaded cost, its ramp and the metric it moves. Headcount is the largest line in the budget and the slowest to reverse.XLSX · Sign in to download · Series A, Series B+
- Option pool and refresh planPool top-up modelled against the hiring plan, and refresh grants on a written policy. The cliff to watch is not month 12. It is month 48.XLSX · Sign in to download · Series B+
- International sub-plans for equityGranting options to somebody employed in another country can fail three ways at once. When you need a sub-plan, and what to check before the first grant.PDF · Sign in to download · Series B+
- Early exercise and promissory notesBuying option shares before they vest, the filing deadline measured in days, and why a non-recourse loan can defeat the whole point.PDF · Sign in to download · Series B+