zero friction seed rounds
DESCRIPTION
Open Sourcing Early Stage Investment Documentation and ComplianceTRANSCRIPT
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Standardizing Early Stage Investment Docs
IndiaModule 6, 1st FloorIITM Research ParkChennai, TN - 600001
United States340 S Lemon Ave #9923Walnut, CA - 91789
Humble Paper
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
with startups
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Timing is everything
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Today India is estimated to be a home to more than 10,000 technology based start-ups with up to 8,000 new start-ups sprouting every year
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
250+ India v 6,500+USearly stage businesses funded every year
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Even as start-up costs for Internet companies have fallen precipitously over the last few years catalysing the start-up movement in India, legal costs for the same have only gone up
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Even after investors commit, deals take inordinately long and often fall through
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Documents currently used for early stage investments actually resemble later stage deals
Lack of transparency in early stage investments and typical deal terms leads to over-negotiation and unnecessary friction
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
The need of the hour is to reduce negotiation at early financing rounds to key commercial points with deals being closed quickly using standardized documents
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Humble Paper is open-sourcing a set of legal documents for seed financing in India and publishing it on the Internet.
For free.
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Initial Release (v 0.0.1)★ term sheet
★ share subscription and shareholder agreement
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
• Not Proprietary. Open source, licensed under the creative commons license.
• Language and Structure. Should appear familiar to lawyers but be simple and readable by non-lawyers. Strike a balance between the language in current legal documents and plain english.
• Help. Clauses should be annotated with helpful commentary justifying their legal and/or commercial utility.
• Upgrade Path. Each document package should have a clear upgrade path to the next financing stage.
• Concise. A term sheet should ideally be one or two pages. A shareholder agreement should ideally be 7-10 pages.
Guiding Principles
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
But we won’t stop at just providing the documents for download
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
We’ve built a platform to interactively generate ready-to-sign documents using an intuitive questionnaire
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
★ we’ll track and assist you with your RoC and RBI filings
★ we’ll help simplify and streamline cross-border deals
★ we’ll manage the cap table as each startup passes through successive financing rounds
★ we’ll provide investors with a dashboard to each of their portfolio companies
and we’re going further
to provide a one-stop platform, we’ve already tied up with a top-tier Indian law firm and with a panel of chartered accountants and company secretaries
Series Seed India powered by Humble Paper
Request an invite, partner with us or generally reach out to us at [email protected]
We’re just getting started.