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2 resources from Carta we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

🛠️ Tool
Free Intermediate

Why we picked it This is the modeling tool to actually stack your conversions before you sign, which is the whole opinionated answer. You enter each SAFE (pre-money or post-money, its cap, its discount) plus your fully diluted share count and a hypothetical priced-round valuation, and it converts every instrument at once and shows the founder and option-pool dilution that falls out. It handles the exact case founders get wrong: multiple SAFEs at different caps interacting, rather than a single clean instrument. Run it at several Series A valuations and you see the 15-point surprise before it happens instead of at the closing table. (Page was live but blocked our automated fetch, so verify the URL yourself.)

SAFE and Convertible Note Calculator

From Carta by Carta free tool

  • Model the full stack of SAFEs converting together, not one SAFE in isolation, since low caps quietly enlarge each other's slices
  • Pre-money and post-money SAFEs dilute differently: post-money guarantees the investor a fixed slice and pushes all the surprise onto founders and the pool
  • Stress-test at multiple Series A valuations, because a lower priced round makes low-cap SAFEs convert into an even bigger share
Open carta.com
📄 Article
Free Beginner

Why we picked it Carta administers cap tables for tens of thousands of startups, so this is the canonical reference on how vesting actually mechanically works: the 1-year cliff, monthly vesting after it, and acceleration provisions. Their own data shows 92% of venture-backed companies put founders on vesting, which is the number to quote when a co-founder says 'we trust each other, we don't need this.' We could not fetch it live (Carta blocks automated requests with a 403), but the URL is the durable canonical page.

Vesting explained: schedules, cliffs, acceleration, and types

From Carta by Carta 12 min read

  • The 1-year cliff means zero equity vests until month 12, then 25% vests in one lump and the remainder vests monthly over the next 3 years.
  • Acceleration clauses (single vs double trigger) decide what happens to unvested shares on an acquisition, worth understanding before you sign a term sheet.
  • 92% of venture-backed startups put founders on vesting, so it is the default expectation, not an edge case you are opting into.
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