The Spreadsheet

This is a story about a spreadsheet that started on a whim. I keep a list of seed investors that I’d send to entrepreneurs when I thought the entrepreneurs were great but were too early stage for my fund, Aleph. Late in one day, a couple of weeks ago, after sending the list for the 2nd time, I…

Closing the Information Gap on Employee Option Grants: Part One

Most people do not have enough information to properly evaluate the offer they receive, compare it against industry benchmarks, negotiate it and eventually make an informed decision. This can be mitigated by employers…

Cap Tables 101 (Why didn’t we think of this sooner?!)

Hidden Cap Table Secrets

Let’s begin with the basics — capitalisation tables (a.k.a cap tables) track ownership in the company’s share capital. They aren’t just used to track percentage holdings, they reflect share classes. Employees and founders typically hold common shares; investors typically get preferred…

Why We Decided to Drink the Lemonade?

The first thing to remember is that Venture Capital is an aberration business. A very small number of investments return a very large amount of a fund’s returns and even the entire venture industry’s returns. Hence, a very small number of firms and companies…

When The Stock Market Dives, Your Stock Options May Be Crushed By Terms You Can’t See

I am sure any engineer or executive at a Unicorn company or a tech company valued at hundreds of millions of dollars is sitting around asking themselves what does the stock market dive…

Here’s What We Learned and You Can Learn from Ben Rubin and the Meerkat Founders