Mike Jabbawy

If you are a founder of an emerging company looking to raise money in a bridge round, you should hope the answer to that question is “yes” for a few key reasons I will get into shortly. First a quick anecdote. I was meeting with a founder of a high profile tech start-up last week (not a current client) in Boston and he informed me that he was in the middle of raising a friends and family bridge round. My first question – what was the vehicle for the investment? When he told me a traditional convertible promissory note I asked him whether he had considered utilizing (or been advised by his counsel to utilize) the SAFE alternative. I was shocked that his answer was a flat no. In fact he had never even heard of a SAFE. For those in the same position, start by reading this. Although over 3 years have passed since their creation out of YCombinator, SAFEs remain under used in east coast bridge financings. Here is why founders should want that trend to change:

No Maturity

Arguably the biggest headache for start-ups in a bridge financing is getting the maturity date wrong. If you do it can become a founder’s worst enemy, a logistical nightmare that turns a fairly inexpensive financing, into a more expensive one, as counsel is needed to draft documentation to extend maturity and founders end up needing to chase signatures from the requisite majority, all simply to extend a maturity date on an instrument that no investor ever expected to be paid back cash under. Not to mention all the question a founder starts receiving when they circulate that paper work to their investors. Oy. Safes do away with maturity all together and in doing so place an emphasis on the economic terms investors truly cared about when they decided to invest – namely mechanics for conversion and payment upon an earlier sale of the company.

No Interest

URGENT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. To all those founders of start-ups raising a bridge round to its first equity financing, if your investors are making a stink in negotiations about the interest rate % or form of interest calculation (simple vs compounding) in the round, walk away. This is something that drives me crazy when I represent my early stage clients and something I always tell investors to drop first in a negotiation if they truly want to win the deal. You are investing in a start-up. The bet is that the investment will convert, not that you will make a bank like return on a loan. SAFEs do away with this conversation all together. Thank the lord.

No Phantom Liquidation Preference

Historically, when an investor’s principal plus interest under a convertible note converted at a discount or capped rate in connection with the triggering equity financing, that investor would get the benefit of receiving not only the actual dollars invested under the note in the form of the same shares issued in the next round, but also the (in most cases, material) discount premium. As a result, the bridge round investors were receiving what became known as “phantom liquidation preference” specifically tied to the lot of shares which had been received as a direct result of the discount/cap piece of the conversion. So why should founders care? Liquidation preference, in the most simple terms, is the amount of cash you would need to sell the company for before the common stock holders (founders and employees) saw a dollar in their pocket. Increasing the size of the liquidation preference, only distances the common from cashing in at a sale. Good news SAFES correct this problem by providing for conversion of the amount under the safe plus the discount premium into a shadow security with the same rights as the preferred security sold in the equity round but with a per share liquidation price equal to the lowered rate at which the safe investment converted.