New forms of startups financing.

Why use Series Seed Documents instead of capped convertible debt?

This seems to be the real issue. In my opinion, the reason that capped convertible debt is the current market leader is that entrepreneurs have been conditioned over time to believe that convertible debt is (a) faster (b) cheaper and (c) better for them than equity investment. This is EXACTLY why I created the Series Seed Documents. With Series Seed:

· Costs should be roughly the same (if not cheaper) than using industry standard debt documents. There are a number of different convertible debt documents out there and there will likely be some back and forth whereas these are standard documents.

· Same point for speed. If parties agree to Series Seed Documents, should be faster than debt documents since there is some negotiation with debt documents from sophisticated investors.

· Series Seed Documents are transparent: no hidden gotchas can get served up in definitive documents. You can review them right now if you want.

· Equity documents give investors more clear definition around rights, more stability and less potential squabbling in the next round.

· Equity gives investors the opportunity to get long term capital gains tax treatment if early exit.

· With minor manipulation, Series Seed enables multiple board structures without tortured and non-functioning agreements (a real problem for convertible debt documents); and

· Entrepreneurs get price certainty instead of the lower of two different prices as with capped debt.

In sum, Series Seed creates a level playing field between capped debt and equity documents in terms of speed and cost. When one studies the (admittedly highly technical) benefits of Series Seed vs. price debt, Series Seed is a better solution.

There has been a robust debate on this topic with folks like Fred Wilson, Paul Graham and Seth Levine all chiming in. To clarify, there is no question that as an entrepreneur you would prefer uncapped convertible debt to equity. As Josh and many others point out, this is typically not a fair deal for the investors and many investors won’t do it, or will only do it for people that they are blindly in love with. Also, Seth raises some interesting points about ecosystem health, though most entrepreneurs I know aren’t too concerned about killing the golden goose. Once a price cap has been introduced, however, Series Seed Documents are a better solution to getting the first round complete for both entrepreneurs and investors.

Startups Valuation secrets

The valuations of today’s private tech leaders – Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and possibly Twitter – are such that I believe upwards of 50-75% of the terminal values of these companies will be captured by the folks who did the real work and took the real risks, those who quit their jobs and begged, borrowed and cajoled friends, families and angel investors to take a chance on their far-fetched idea.

Here is the important, and game-changing, point: in order to participate in the great wealth creation taking place in this and future technology cycles, you will have to be a founder, an early employee or a private investor. The so-called easy money will be earned before a company goes public. This is a radical shift from earlier technology cycles.

The second factor contributing to the far high valuations accruing to private companies today is the speed at which companies can now exploit the global marketplace. When I was at idealab in the 1990s, none of our start-ups attempted to address international markets in the first few years of their existence. In fact, for many of those companies, international markets didn’t become a serious focus until after they went public. How times have changed.

Today it is possible to pursue an international growth strategy almost as quickly as a domestic one. The cost of running a global business has dramatically shrunk, and while costs of going overseas have plummeted, the revenue opportunities have increased manifold.

Just consider where three of the largest economies were 10 years ago, and where they are today. India was a $500 billion economy in 2000. Today it is a $1.4 trillion one. Brazil was a $600 billion economy ten years ago, compared to $2 trillion in 2010. The growth of China’s economy in the last decade is breathtaking, from $1.2 trillion to $5.7 trillion in just 10 years. Combined, these three economies have added $6.8 trillion to world GDP since 2000.

Public investors are aware of these economic figures, and they are rewarding companies addressing the global marketplace sooner in their lifecycle. Groupon has taken note. It is just four years old and already operates in 35 countries. Given its international ambitions, it is likely that within two years Groupon will have upwards of 20,000 employees outside of the U.S. A potential $25 billion IPO valuation awaits it for going global faster than its peers.

What makes the change I have just described so fascinating is that so many of the traditional limited partners to venture capital funds have withdrawn from the asset class in the last few years, understandable perhaps after 10 years of poor returns. But just as the game has shifted to rewarding private investors over public shareholders like never before, limited partners have decided to look elsewhere for exceptional returns.

I believe that is a mistake.

Going forward, those who participate in building new companies and providing the start-up capital to fuel the growth of those businesses, will be handsomely rewarded like never before.

http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/05/startup-valuation.html