Y Combinator To Offer Standardized Angel Funding Legal Docs | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator To Offer Standardized Angel Funding Legal Docs

techcrunch.com

156 pointsdanielrhodes45 comments

Open articleView on HN

"The documents were created with their law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and are available ->HERE<-."

Is it just me or does the link on 'here' not actually work?

Actually I found a link somewhere else to one of the actual pages - http://www.ycombinator.com/seriesaa.html

And the page now has a message saying

'Sorry, there's a glitch with the documents and we had to take them down. We hope to have something back soon.'

I wonder if the glitch is technical or legal? My guess would be it's an IP issue with one of the legal documents. I can't imagine why lawyers wouldn't want this to go ahead.

Not sure that I like the sound of "We hope to have SOMETHING back soon."

This is really really useful. Thanks so much!

Jessica / Paul - do you have the source code of this as wall, not just the byte code?

I'd love to have a summary of these terms, e.g. what rights the preferred stock created in these documents has (anti-dilution, liquiditation preference, double-dip, etc.).

Yes, corresponding term sheet would be very helpful.

We used a version of these (though had to edit them some) in our recent funding round, and I can't even imagine how much money they saved us. They are, if nothing else, a great starting point. Were I an angel, I'd use them for sure.

We did as well and they saved us a fair bit of cash - not to mention the hassle of figuring out what vanilla terms should look like.

This is great! I can't say how positive a step this is.

It's really common for things like NDAs, etc to be provided by independent organisations free of charge (e.g. the UK patent office provide one) but moving this into other documents is a must.

I'd like to see a plain English description of each clause, possibly with extra optional clauses, creative commons style.

I love the idea of pick'n'mix legal documents. As long as they are drawn up by good lawyers it would make the law a much more accessible thing to regular people/companies.

PG has "made noises" about this for a while here. I'm glad to see this, as it's really not rocket science, and as Matt says, "a great starting point". Thanks also to the lawyer folks involved for getting it. This sort of thing won't mean less work for good lawyers, it will mean more work doing real stuff, and less twiddling around with boilerplate.

This is a good strategy for YC: it "commoditizes the complements" (borrowing a phrase from http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html ) of a deal, lowers the cost of an early stage financing round (giving more value for their investment) and makes it easier for prospects to evaluate aspects of the offer in advance.

Not to be pedantic or anything :) but there's a typo on seriesaa.html page: "...many situations with without too many modifications." 'with' is extraneous.

email pg

done

Thanks PG and YC!

Wow, pure awesome! This makes life so much easier for grass root startups and young entrepreneurs.

Much <3

Found this in the TC Comments. http://rapidshare.com/files/137276513/Documents_YCombinator....

Could you add scribd to it, so people can read them w/o downloading?

This is exactly what the startup community needs. I am surprised no one has done it before, actually.

I know several rich post-startup people who would probably be angel investors if the process were more standardized. I bet the number of potential angel investors is 10 times larger than the number who jump through all the hoops to actually do it. With that much more early stage investment to feed on, there could be 10 times as many startups.

It'd be great if someone could back this out into a 1 or 2 page term sheet

I couldn't download them. Does anybody have them?

Not to sound ungrateful (this is actually really awesome, not that I have use for it right now), but why only ".doc"? In the spirit of openness, it'd be great if they were also available in an open format such as the OpenDocument Format.

The .doc is actually a more widely readable format. Why care how hackable a document format is if all you want to do is view and edit it?

It's been a while since I've used a .doc on my personal computer, but when I do, I use Open Office. It's never understood .docs perfectly and has always been a pain to send back and forth to people. Now, I think I remember reading something about Microsoft "opening" it's formats, so maybe this is a non-issue these days?

Even still, in the more general case, the idea that a file format is locked up and has to be reverse engineered for some people to view/edit it always presents at least some problems for someone. Supporting open formats, while perhaps not as widely used right now, at least is a step in the right direction. Maybe Joe Hacker, whose been using MS Office all his life, gets curious when he sees a .odt. Maybe he looks it up and sees that he'd rather be apart of a movement to free the world of non-open/proprietary office file formats and makes a vow to only create documents in a free format like OpenDocument (and convert .docs to .odt). Maybe he tells all his friends and the demand for OpenDocument is increased.

Oh, and I hear Microsoft is supporting OpenDocument these days (at least via a plugin).

a hacker can't use Google Docs (ie: free) to open a .doc file and copy/paste?

While Google Docs is free (as in beer), it is not free as in freedom. Some people will not use software because of that.

I'm not so much a zealot and would consider using Google Docs, if I could be sure my "sensitive" documents were only readable by myself. These documents, in particular, I would think, lend themselves to being a bit more private than your average college paper.

Also, Google Docs supports OpenDocument, at least according to WikiPedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDocument_soft...)

"While Google Docs is free (as in beer), it is not free as in freedom. Some people will not use software because of that."

The correct inference to make from that is "and those people will miss out on certain opportunities as a result," not "so everyone else should bend over backward to accomodate their self-imposed restrictions."

I think you miss the point of free software. The thing free software people are trying to _avoid_ is restrictions. Lets remind ourselves of the 4 freedoms the Free Software Definition states:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

I'm familiar with the advantages of free software. But if you refuse to use proprietary software, you are, by definition, imposing a restriction on yourself.

I'd also suggest that, when someone makes valuable business documents available to others (a fine example of 'free software'), and you decline to use them because they're in a ubiquitous proprietary format, you are maybe missing the free-software forest for the trees.

> and you decline to use them because they're in a ubiquitous proprietary format, you are maybe missing the free-software forest for the trees.

I didn't decline to use them. I suggested that it would be nice if these documents were in a format that was more open. Perhaps something with a half-life of 10 years.

I didn't mention it before, but I've noticed that in Office for Mac 2008(7? whatever) the default file format is .docx. OOXML to my knowledge is now a standard, so it seems as though Microsoft is _trying_ to play nice with others. However, there's already another standard, OpenDocument.

Why does it take a hacker to figure out how to convert a .doc file to an open format?

Just thinking about thesedocs coming out o a meeting with wilson sonsini, who quoteda convert debt round of 300-500k to be around $15k in costs. Will have to look closer, but excited to cut tha amount down.

Hopefully this will provide more transparency and uniformity to the process and help all concerned get a better deal, especially startups who cannot afford decent lawyers and hence often more vunerable.

Just in time for the YC Demo Day tomorrow.

The article links to the ycombinator homepage, I see no legal docs there. Am I missing something?

You could do a Google search for them, I quickly tried "site:ycombinator.com legal" and came up with the following:

http://www.ycombinator.com/seriesaa.html

I'm sure we can patiently wait, they're doing us a huge favour which I for one, am very grateful for :)

I agree, didn't intend for it to come off as a complaint, was more curious than anything. Now I'm even more curious though.

It's okay - I didn't think it came off as a complaint, I was just showing how I found the relevant page.

I hope the last comment about being grateful didn't come off as arrogant, I just think its fantastic when people release information like this as this is valuable in its own right, but also a good starting point for people trying to get a handle on the startup business.

Top work YC!

Great stuff. I wish more legal documents were standardized and in the common domain.

Adding corresponding term sheet as part of this document set would be really nice.

Where do we send these forms once we fill them out? How do we make it "official"?

I believe these documents are useful for getting funding from venture capitalists, not necessarily to incorporate. To make it official you'll need to actually find funding. These documents are helpful in assisting the startup in "securing" this funding from the legal side of things.

Hey man, where'd they go? Anyone got a copy they want to share?

game. changing.

No longer available? Tease.

This is great, thanks!

OOOOOOOOOOO YESSSSSSSSS

Reply on news.ycombinator.com