BRAVE: VC Term Sheets VS. Founder Control, Valuation Myths, Governance & Deal Failure - E663
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
22 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the founder’s story that opens the episode and why did he sign an exploding term sheet?
This founder basically had gotten a term sheet. It was very onerous in terms of economic rights, but also in terms of control rights. But more importantly, the term sheet was an exploding term sheet. It had to be signed pretty much on the spot or it would be gone. The founder caught his lawyer. His lawyer said, You shouldn't do it. And he still signed it anyway because he felt like that was no alternative. And then the next day he was regretting it. Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy O, Venture Capitalist, SIRA founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights.
Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. Your deals, startup failure patterns and valid addition. And I think there's quite an interesting component because we're looking at it both from the founder perspective, but really from the VC perspective. I just want to remember that this is primarily from a VC fund strategy perspective. So we'll talk about deals. And what's really important is that just because you find and select a great deal doesn't mean that the deal is closed, right? And so what you need to do is that you need to issue a term sheet, which is a non-binding statement of the key economic terms, perms, and control rights.
Then you need to negotiate with the founder. Then you need to persuade them it's a good deal and then you sign the deal across both sides. So there's a term shape. Then in parallel after that, you then start working with the lawyers. That's where all the lawyers come in. Start converting that term sheet into a long form investment contract, right? And so there are different documents that be associated with that. And then after that, in parallel, the VC will be doing due diligence. This may take two to three months for the documents to be negotiated, the devils and the details. And in parallel, there'll be a due diligence component. Maybe there'll be reference checks on the founder, eFishery. It talks about how the sovereign wealth funds send people to visit the farms to audit.
Uh whether the farmers were using it, et cetera. Of course, in the e fishery case, they also talk about how the e fishery team Was also conducting fraud by making sure they only visited some farms and coaching and giving scripts to the farms about what to say about e-fishery as a company, right? So this is the due diligence, a cat of mouse perspective to look for fraud or to look for gaps or differences between the initial analysis. Um, and then eventually you were signed the long-form subscription documents, which would basically encapsulate. all the final documents, lots of documents. And of course, not just the founders have to sign, not just the new investors assigned, but all of the prior investors also have the sign.
And then after everybody signs, then the capital is wired, right? And for example, just two weeks ago, one of my portfolio companies started messaging me. And he was like, Jeremy, you have to sign, you are the last signature in this document. Otherwise, this deal's not round, it's not gonna go through, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, Hey buddy, like I told you yesterday you told me about this document over WhatsApp, but unfortunately After I looked for it, it turns out that it was my spam folder. And so I didn't see this document for like effectively one and a half weeks. We're already fast tracking our lawyers to review that. And so anyway, we came to agreement, but the lawyers were able to do this quickly, and so we were able to sign the documents very quickly after that.
And so his round went through smoothly, but from his perspective he got, I imagine, very antsy because he's wow, there's only Jeremy left who hasn't signed this document, right? And he knew that.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the founder’s story that opens the episode and why did he sign an exploding term sheet?
0:00–4:23
2
How do due‑diligence checks and legal reviews still miss fraud in Southeast Asian deals?
4:23–7:32
3
Why is fundraising a 10‑year partnership decision rather than just a price negotiation?
7:32–11:37
4
How do valuation disputes and founder ego lead to failed rounds and company death?
11:37–15:25
5
What hidden clauses (liquidation preferences, anti‑dilution) offset high headline valuations?
15:25–19:06
6
How can aggressive term‑sheet economics destroy founder trust and cause regret?
19:06–22:00
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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