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Angel financing - Term sheets (part 2) (startupnorth.ca)
4 points by paulsb on April 7, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


"Say for example your company currently has 1,000,000 shares outstanding. You and the investors settle on a valuation of $1 per share for a pre-money valuation of $1,000,000. The investors put in $250,000 and in exchange they are issued 250,000 shares. The post money valuation of the company is $1,250,000 and investors own 20% of the company."

I have trouble understanding this. Why do they only own 20% of the company, if they own 25% of the shares?

I guess it is also a complication that the investment actually changes the value of the company (because it now has 250000$ more)? But wouldn't it make more sense to conclude that if an $250000 investment buys you 25% of the company, it is evaluated at 750000$ (before the investment)?

Sorry if I get this completely wrong, I am not used to those calculations.


The 250,000 new shares are created, not transferred. So there were 1,000,000 shares before the investment and 1,250,000 shares after the investment.


OK, that makes sense ;-)

On the other hand, how can shares simply be created? Is this how people get "diluted"? Like before this transaction, some other guy owns 10% of the company, and afterwards suddenly he only owns 8% - how is that possible? By claiming in theory that his 8% still have the same value in cash? But since all those are just virtual estimates, not hard transactions, how can you ever be safe from being screwed over?




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