SAFE Valuation Cap or Discount Depends on Where You Are

SAFE Valuation Cap or Discount Depends on Where You Are

Author

Peter Walker

|

Read time: 

1 minute

Published date: 

June 27, 2023

In Silicon Valley, 70% of pre-seed SAFEs use a cap with no discount—in Seattle it is about 50/50—investor preference for each term varies significantly by...

LinkedIn: SAFE Valuation Cap or Discount Depends on Where You Are

SAFE Valuation Cap? or Discount? Both? It depends on where you are.

There are lots of important terms to know when raising on SAFEs, but the most critical are the valuation cap and the discount.

Different VC ecosystem have their own patterns for those two terms. In Silicon Valley, 70% of pre-seed fundraising on SAFEs happen with a valuation cap and no discount.

In Seattle, it's about 50/50 between valuation cap, no discount and valuation caps with a discount.

In Chicago, a discount of some type appears in about 80% of SAFEs.

These can greatly impact the eventual conversion into equity when your company raises a priced round - so be sure to use our free SAFEs calculator to model out dilution before you sign those SAFEs!

Happy fundraising! If you're into this sort of startup data, we have a whole new quarter to dig into next week. Sign up for the Data Minute newsletter in the first comment below to stay on top of it.

#cartadata #SAFEs #valuationcap #discounts #startups #founders #preseed

Peter Walker
Author: Peter Walker
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.

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