NORATECH

A quick safe template

At the early stages — pre-seed and seed — you may have incorporated the company, you probably have a co-founder, and you almost certainly have very little revenue. What you have is conviction. And that's mostly what you're selling. The people who show up to invest at this stage know that. Friends and family. Angel investors who back people more than products. Accelerators like Y Combinator. Sometimes your own savings. They're betting on you — because there isn't enough of a b

In the first two articles, we covered the big picture — how money moves into a company, what you're giving away when you take it, and the documents that govern that exchange. We talked briefly about SAFEs, term sheets, valuation, dilution, and option pools — we'll cover each in detail in the articles ahead. But we kept saying things like "at your first round" or "when a VC comes in" without stopping to explain: when does any of this actually happen? What does the sequence loo

In Nine Steps Every Founder Must Take Before Seeking an Investor, we listed the option pool as step nine — the final step before bringing in outside capital. By that stage, you have already: ✅ Agreed on the founder equity split and vesting ✅ Incorporated the company ✅ Issued founder shares with vesting ✅ Filed your 83(b) election (within 30 days of the grant date) ✅ Signed IP assignment agreements The foundation is set. Ownership is clean. The structure is legal. Then comes t