Is my term sheet “market standard”?
A new report by Mountside Ventures and Landscape VC reveals and analyses the standard terms of 200+ VCs.
This week, we released our inaugural Term Sheet guide, Demystifying Venture Capital Term Sheets, aimed at founders raising an institutional round.
The report provides insights from 200+ global venture capital investors, with over £11 billion in assets under management investing in over 1,000 deals per year, on the typical terms they offer founders. It’s the first time many of these investors have contributed to such a comprehensive analysis of their typical terms!
We partnered with Landscape VC and Beauhurst in producing it, and are grateful to the 200+ investors that contributed:
🧐 Our objective
The objective of the report is to increase transparency in the early-stage fundraising ecosystem by demystifying the world of term sheets for founders, as well as to provide benchmarks for VCs on how their peers are investing and how competitive their terms are.
We want to give entrepreneurs the know-how to be able to understand the key components of a term sheet. Even for founders who have raised capital previously, we hope it will be a useful benchmarking exercise; “market standard” is not a static concept
Term Sheets are a crucial tool for founders which dictate the terms that an investment will be structured. Whilst founders can lean on their advisers (like us!) to help them with this, having an upfront understanding of the market, the different types of investors and why this impacts their terms provide an invaluable advantage as founders start their fundraising journey.
TLDR;
We’ve summarised what a market standard term sheet would look like below if we were to recreate a term sheet based on the most common terms.
Below are some of the highlights:
📄 Share preferences
80% of all investors surveyed expect preference shares rather than ordinary shares, with the most common being a 1x non-participating liquidation preference. Only 14% of such investors expect a participating preference.
📈 Valuation
Beauhurst’s market insights show that although rumours of valuation squeezes are increasing, this has not yet been reflected in the data. Between 2011 and 2021, the average pre-money valuation has more than tripled; rising from £6m in 2011, to £29m in 2021. A large contributing factor to this growth is the increase in mega-round deals during this time period.
💰 Fees
Most investors charge fees to their investee companies in order to cover the operational costs of their fund (19% charge no fees). These fees can be split into two components: one-off deal fees (e.g. external legal, commercial and financial diligence fees), and ongoing annual management fees, often charged in advance (e.g. arrangement, board and monitoring fees).
Looking at all investor types, the majority of investors (c. 70%) recharge their deal fees to the companies they invest in. On average, these fees are around 1% of the investment.
VCs are less likely to charge management fees to investee companies than other types of investors, as the majority of VC funds recharge their management fees to their limited partners (typically 15% over the fund cycle) rather than their portfolio companies. The most common fee structure for VCs is 1%-2%. On the other hand, EIS and VCT investors are more likely to charge management fees to their portfolio companies. The most common fee structure for those investors is between 5%-7% of the cheque size.
🏂 Board presence
The majority of investors (c. 80%) will expect a board seat, especially if they are leading the round. This will typically be accompanied by a list of Board Reserved Matters over which the Investor Director will have a veto right.
🗓 Founder vesting
There was significant variance across the investor landscape on what is “market” for founder vesting, with no clear approach on the percentage of vesting shares or a vesting schedule and terms. In our experience, this is the most hotly contested and negotiated area of the term sheet. However, the survey was clear that almost all investors (98% of those surveyed) will require reverse vesting over a percentage of founder shares; the most common position being that such shares will vest monthly over a 4 year period, with a 12-month cliff.
📜 Share options
The majority of investors, irrespective of type and stage, ask founders to create or top-up their share option pool. “Market standard” for a share option pool is 5–10% of the total equity (57% ask for this), although many funds require 10–15% (32% ask for this). This is important for investors to see that founders have ringfenced value to incentivise existing management and attract new talent. As expected, for earlier stage rounds, founders are more likely to be asked to reserve a higher portion of the equity for share options.
🤐 Exclusivity period
35% of investors expect a 4 week exclusivity period, which operates as a binding term in the term sheet.
⏳ Transaction timeline
The majority of funds (c. 50%) expect to take 8–12 weeks to perform their diligence and agree on the equity documents. The quickest funds are able to complete an investment in under 2–3 weeks; this data likely represents small cheque sizes, with limited due diligence.
“I can see this Term Sheet report becoming a staple of founder education in the market”
says Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital
👉 For a deeper dive and explore the full analysis, the report is accessible here and is free to download. For further fundraising resources, click here.
We’d love to hear from you so drop me a line with feedback on jonathan@mountsideventures.com, or tell us what you’d like us to include on the next one!
About Mountside Ventures
Mountside Ventures is an award-winning advisory firm, specialised in early-stage fundraising and exits, on a mission to optimise the fundraising process for founders and funds.
