Revisiting the term sheet

In 2005, my partner Jason Mendelson and I wrote a long series of posts describing all of the parts of a typical venture capital Term Sheet.  We started on 1/3/05 with a post on Price and finished up on 8/23/05 with a post on Indemnification and Assignment. 

Of all of the stuff I’ve written over the past four years, my stats continue to tell me that stuff we wrote in the Term Sheet series is some of the most popular content on my blog.  As I was writing my post I Blog, I Tweet, But Why I realized that many of you have started reading my blog after 1/1/06 so you might have missed this series.

We’ve seen this series used as the base for a number of college courses, we’ve been thanked by people all over the world for writing it, and we’ve been encouraged to publish a version of it in book form.  Maybe someday we will get around to it, but for now it’s still relevant as an original web based life form. 

For quick reference, following are the key posts:

• Price
• Liquidation Preference
• Board of Directors
• Protective Provisions
• Drag Along
• Anti-Dilution
• Pay-to-Play
• Dividends
• Redemption Rights
• Conversion
• Conditions Precedent to Financing
• Vesting
• Information Rights
• Registration Rights
• Right of First Refusal
• Voting Rights
• Employee Pool
• Restriction on Sales
• Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement
• Co-Sale Agreement
• Founders Activities
• Initial Public Offering Shares Purchase
• No Shop Agreement (also Unilateral or Serial Monogamy)
• Indemnification
• Assignment

While the 24 references are a bit dated (we might use Lost or Weeds this time around), I hope you will also enjoy (or at least forgive us for including) a little bit of Jack Bauer.

(Image source: theprivateequiteer)