Advisor shares are equity grants given to outside advisors in exchange for ongoing strategic guidance, introductions, or domain expertise. Usually issued as stock options from the option pool. Typical advisor grants range from 0.1 to 1 percent of fully diluted shares per advisor, vest over two years with no cliff, and are formalized in a short advisor agreement.
The Founders Institute's FAST agreement (Founder Advisor Standard Template) is the most widely used framework for sizing and structuring advisor grants. It indexes grants by company stage (idea, startup, growth) and advisor engagement level (standard, strategic, expert), producing recommended ranges that typically land between 0.1 and 1 percent. Engaged advisors at an...
A growth strategy is the explicit plan for how a company will scale revenue over a defined period, typically 1-3 years. It specifies the growth levers the company will pull (acquisition, expansion, retention, pricing, geographic, product), resource allocation across those levers, and the metrics that will track success. The discipline is making prioritization explicit rather than treating all levers as equally important, which means none get the focused investment to actually compound. Growth strategy is the operating layer below go-to-market: GTM defines how you reach customers; growth strategy defines how you scale revenue with them, and a well-executed strategy pushes a company from early traction into a genuine [Scale-Up...
A closing call is the final conversation between founders and investors immediately before or during a financing's close, covering wire timing and post-closing items. It typically happens after definitive documents are signed and shortly before wire transfers, covering wire instructions, signature confirmations, any last-minute clarifications, post-closing transition items (board meeting scheduling, first investor update), and tone-setting for the new working relationship. It's a relatively quick formality compared to earlier-stage meetings but still meaningful as the first interaction in the new investor-founder relationship. The [Management Presentation] typically happens weeks earlier during diligence, well before the closin...
Regulation S (Reg S) is the SEC exemption from US securities registration for offers and sales made outside the United States to non-US persons. It is distinct from Regulation D (which covers domestic offerings to US accredited investors), allowing US companies to raise capital from international investors without registering the offering with the SEC under the Securities Act of 1933. It is the regulatory mechanism most commonly used when US startups raise from sovereign wealth funds, foreign family offices, foreign corporations, or other non-US investor types.
The two main "safe harbors" within Reg S:
Roadmap planning is the process of prioritizing and sequencing initiatives across product, engineering, GTM, and other functions over a defined time horizon. It's used to align cross-functional teams on what gets done when, communicate priorities to internal and external stakeholders, and balance competing requests against available capacity. The discipline is one of the most-leveraged operational practices and one founders most often do informally rather than rigorously. Roadmaps connect strategy to execution across time.
The components of useful roadmaps:
Time horizon:
Initi...
Cofounder dating is the evaluation period (typically 1-3 months) between potential cofounders before formalizing the partnership with a founders agreement and equity allocation. It is designed to test working compatibility through actual collaborative work (not just conversations), complementary skills coverage of what the business actually needs, value alignment on the fundamental questions (vision, ambition, work intensity, ethics, exit goals), and shared vision for the company being built. The discipline matters because the cost of formalizing a bad cofounder partnership and then breaking up is enormous (it typically destroys the company) compared to the cost of a thorough dating period upfront. It is the structural proc...
Spousal consent is the document where a founder's or employee's spouse acknowledges and agrees to the company's equity terms (vesting, transfer restrictions, repurchase rights). It is important in community property states (CA, TX, WA, AZ, NV, ID, LA, NM, WI) where state law may give the spouse a legal interest in equity acquired during marriage, binding the spouse to the same restrictions and preventing complications from divorce, death, or transfer. It's a small piece of paperwork that prevents large complications later.
The community property concept:
Community property states (9 states): California, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Wisconsin.
Default rule: assets acquired during marriage ...
The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is the highest-ranking executive of a company, responsible for strategy, capital allocation, top-level hiring, and accountability to the board. The role also owns key external relationships with investors, the board, major customers, and partners. At most venture-backed startups it is held by a founder (the "founder-CEO") during early and growth stages, sometimes transitioned to a "hired CEO" during scale-up or later stages. It is the role that anchors the company's strategic direction and the position where most operational authority concentrates in venture-backed companies.
The core responsibilities of a CEO:
The vocabulary of the AI era of startups. This cluster covers the foundational concepts of modern AI (foundation models, LLMs, generative AI), the architecture and operations that power AI applications (Transformer, training data, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, RAG, context window), the economics that determine viability (inference cost, GPU cost, token economics), the strategic moats AI companies build (data flywheel, AI moat, wrapper vs thick wrapper), the safety considerations (alignment, safety), and current-era terms (multimodal, agents, vibe coding). 22 entries.
This cluster is the freshest in the lexicon. If you're building anything AI-adjacent in 2025, every entry here is operational vocabulary.
A PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) is the purchase of stock in a publicly-traded company at a discount to market price by institutional investors. Buyers include hedge funds, mutual funds, and growth equity firms, with public companies using PIPEs when they need capital quickly without the time and complexity of a traditional secondary offering. PIPE deals are relevant to startups primarily in the context of SPAC mergers (where PIPE financing typically accompanies the SPAC transaction to validate the combined company's pricing) and at post-IPO companies that need additional capital. Most pre-IPO startup founders don't deal with PIPE directly, but understanding it matters for SPAC contexts and post-IPO operations.
The mec...