America Destroys Its Advantage
April 29, 2025
For decades American Universities have been the envy of the World. With the brightest minds and the best facilities, these globally recognized institutions acted as a magnet for talent everywhere.
When you get a term sheet from a VC, it’s usually a pretty happy moment after a lot of work. However, there’s often a few things in the first version of a VC’s term sheet that you might want to change. Here’s how you negotiate those terms.
The easiest way to push an investor for better terms is to have other investors also competing to be the round lead. If you have more than one credible term sheet, you can push both parties to better terms by highlighting the strengths of each competing offer.
The term sheet templates from Y-Combinator and the NVCA are standard, you can use their brands to push an investor to terms similar to those templates. Thus removing anything potentially unusual.
Given the term sheet, many of your existing investors will be keen to invest more, immediately. Collect that money, so you can extend your runway and as you no longer *need* a lead investor, you have leverage.
Best of luck out there.
