El escáner de señales de alerta en term sheets: encuentra las cláusulas desfavorables para el fundador antes de firmar
Por qué importa este prompt
Founders who can't tell which term sheet clauses are actually negotiable either waste legal fees re-litigating standard market terms with their own attorney, or worse, sign away liquidation preferences, anti-dilution protection, or board control that compound through every subsequent financing round. A bad clause in a seed-stage term sheet doesn't cost you once — it costs you at every exit and every future raise after it.
Para qué lo usamos
You're a first-time founder who just received a term sheet from a lead investor for your seed round, with a Tuesday deadline to respond, and you've never negotiated a priced round before — your lawyer is available but billing by the hour, and you want to walk into that call already knowing where the real fights are.
Prompt
Act as an experienced startup attorney who represents founders, not investors, and has reviewed hundreds of venture term sheets across seed through Series B rounds. Context: Here is the term sheet I need reviewed: [PASTE YOUR TERM SHEET HERE]. For reference, here is my round stage and approximate size: [E.G. SEED ROUND, $2M, PRE-SEED, SERIES A]. Task: Scan the term sheet clause by clause and flag any terms that are non-standard for this round stage, founder-unfriendly, or genuinely worth negotiating. For each flagged clause, explain in plain English what it means, why it matters in practice, and what a more founder-favorable market-standard alternative looks like. Constraints: - Do not flag standard, market-normal terms as problems — only flag genuine outliers - Do not present this as a substitute for an actual lawyer's review; note explicitly that this is a starting point for that conversation, not a final answer - Rank flagged items by negotiation priority: deal-breaker, worth pushing back on, or minor - Explain clauses in plain English rather than restating the legal jargon back Output format: 1. A summary verdict: how founder-friendly is this term sheet overall, on a 1-5 scale, with a one-sentence reason 2. A table: Clause | What it says | Why it matters | Suggested ask 3. The top 3 negotiation priorities to raise first, in order
Resultado
Summary verdict: 2/5 — several clauses are meaningfully more investor-friendly than seed-stage market norms; this term sheet needs real negotiation before signing.
Clause table:
Liquidation preference | 2x non-participating preferred | At seed stage, market standard is 1x. A 2x preference means the investor gets 2x their investment back before any proceeds reach common holders, even in a modest exit. | Push for 1x non-participating — this is one of the most common and most negotiable terms on any term sheet.
Anti-dilution | Full-ratchet | Full-ratchet anti-dilution is rare outside distressed or bridge rounds. It means that if you ever raise a down round, this investor's ownership percentage is protected in full, and all the resulting dilution lands on founders and employees instead of being shared. | Request broad-based weighted average anti-dilution, the market standard at every stage outside distressed financings.
Board composition | 2 investor seats, 1 founder seat | At a $2M seed round, giving investors board majority is unusual and hands them effective control over hiring, firing, and future fundraising decisions well before the company has product-market fit. | Ask for a founder-majority board, or a balanced structure such as 2 founder seats, 1 investor seat, 1 mutually agreed independent.
Pro rata rights | Uncapped, applies to all future rounds | This is standard for a lead investor at this stage and not a red flag. | Leave as is.
Vesting | 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff applied retroactively to founder shares | This matches market norms for seed-stage founder re-vesting and protects the company if a co-founder leaves early. | Leave as is.
Top 3 negotiation priorities, in order: 1) Liquidation preference, 2x down to 1x — this single change affects the payout math in every future exit scenario, good or bad. 2) Anti-dilution, full-ratchet to broad-based weighted average — this is what protects your ownership stake specifically in a down round, which is exactly when you can least afford to lose more of the company. 3) Board composition — don't concede board control at the seed stage unless this specific investor is bringing something to the table that's genuinely irreplaceable beyond the capital itself.
This term sheet is workable, but not as submitted. Taking the liquidation preference and anti-dilution points into the next call alone would move this from roughly a 2/5 to a 4/5 on founder-friendliness, and both are common enough asks that pushing back on them won't read as unreasonable to an experienced investor.
Un fundador primerizo con un term sheet y una fecha límite el martes normalmente tiene dos malas opciones: firmar algo que no entiende del todo, o gastar horas de honorarios de abogado reexplicando la mecánica básica del capital de riesgo antes de que empiece la negociación real. Este prompt está construido para cerrar esa brecha, no reemplazando al abogado, sino asegurando que el fundador llegue a esa llamada ya sabiendo dónde están las verdaderas batallas.
Por qué este prompt está construido así
La instrucción de Rol especifica un abogado del lado del fundador, no un revisor neutral, porque la revisión de un term sheet es inherentemente adversarial. La sección de Contexto pide la etapa y el tamaño de la ronda porque lo que cuenta como señal de alerta es relativo a la ronda.
La sección de Restricciones hace el trabajo más importante aquí. «No marques términos estándar como problemas» existe porque un modelo sin restricciones a menudo asocia «documento legal» con «sé exhaustivo» y marca cláusulas rutinarias que ponen ansioso al fundador sin motivo. La instrucción explícita «esto no sustituye a un abogado» es una salvaguarda deliberada de responsabilidad.
El formato de salida —puntuación general, luego tabla de cláusulas, luego las 3 principales prioridades clasificadas— refleja cómo un fundador realmente necesita usar esto bajo presión de tiempo.
Dónde demuestra su valor
El momento de mayor valor para este prompt no es una revisión cuidadosa y sin prisas, sino las 48 horas entre recibir un term sheet y la llamada donde se espera que respondas con preguntas. Pasar el documento por este prompt antes de esa llamada convierte una sensación vaga de «algo aquí no está bien» en tres solicitudes específicas y defendibles.