风险融资谈判提速高招

    我第一次洽谈风险融资协议的经历非常令人沮丧。当时我走投无路，急需敲定融资，使公司转危为安，并拿到一笔资金来满足公司增长的现金需求。

    但风险投资人似乎并不着急。他的律师也一样。整个过程大致如下：

    • 我的律师告诉我有8项条款需要修改。他在风险融资协议上做了标记。我们花了半天时间商定要点，然后将修改后的协议发送了出去。如果顺利的话，协议可以在一天左右就绪。

    • 对方的律师事务所收到了协议。相关人员这一天都在出差。他们在出席客户的董事会会议。24小时后，我们催促他们。他们说：“我还没联系上我的客户（也就是我的风险投资人）。”两天后，我们收到了回音。

    • 我们的协议被打了回来。他们完全忽略了我们提出的其中5项要求，标注了剩下的3项。这时，四天时间已经过去了。

    • 我打电话给风险投资人。他说：“我不知道你的律师到底明不明白他在干什么。你们提的要求很奇怪。”

    • 我和我的律师谈。他说，对方的律师肯定从未经手过初创公司交易。我和律师商量，我们可以放弃哪些要求。他在其中一项上做出了让步，然后将重新标注过的协议发送了出去。

    • 循环往复。十天过去了。还有四项条款没达成一致。我们开始集中精力解决这些条款。慢慢地，我们又减少到了两项。我发现，律师关注的一些事项过去我认为非常重要，但随着我了解得越来越多，它们似乎并没有那么重要。

    • 我直接和风投家谈这最后两项。我们做出了妥协，继续向前推进。我们要求律师起草文件。然后，我们签了字。这时，三十天已经过去了。

    接下来，最困难的部分开始了。我们开始协商最终文件，也就是详细的法律文件，于是，整个令人抓狂的过程又重头开始了。

    听我的共同创始人布莱恩•莫伦说，他过去工作过的一家公司常常举办“签字聚会”，让所有相关方都飞到同一个地方。所有人都住在同一家酒店内，直到交易最终完成。他说：

    “交易牵涉到很多钱。项目推迟可能会让我们损失几百万美元。相比项目延期带来的损失，让所有人飞到一个地方、住在一家酒店里只是小钱。人们分处不同地点，服务于不同项目时，文件的流转自然不会太快，总有人让你等。”

    因此，我们想：“为什么不为我们公司举行一个签字聚会呢？”

    The very first time I ever negotiated a term sheet was very frustrating. I was desperate to get my funding finalized to derisk my business, as well as to get capital in the bank to meet our growing cash needs.

    But my VC didn't seem to be in such a rush. Nor did his lawyer. The process went something like this:

    • My lawyer tells me 8 clauses that need to change. He marks up the term sheet. We take a half a day to agree the points and send them over. Seems like the term sheet will be done in a day or so.

    • The other law firm gets the docs. They're traveling that day. They are in a board meeting with clients. We press them 24 hours later. They say, "I haven't been able to reach my client (the VC) yet." We hear back in two days

    • We get back our version. They've totally ignored five of our requests and marked up the other three. Four days have now passed.

    • I call the VC to discuss. He says, "I'm not sure your lawyer knows what he's doing. These are strange requests."

    • I talk to my lawyer. He says the other lawyer must never have worked on a startup deal before. We agree where we can live without our points being met. He concedes on one point and sends over our re-marked doc.

    • Rinse. Repeat. Ten days have passed. Four points are open. We finally get focus on those points. We whittle it down to two. I find out my lawyer was digging in on something I thought was important but the more I understood the issue it seemed like an edge case.

    • I talk to the VC. We work the two issues. We compromise. We move on. We ask the lawyers to mock up the docs. We sign. Thirteen days have passed.

    Whew. Now the hard part begins. We move to definitive documents (long-form legal docs) and the whole freakin' process starts again.

    My co-founder Brian Moran told me that a former employer used to hold "signing parties," where every involved party flew to a single location. Then they would all stay in a hotel together until the deal was completed. He said:

    "We had a lot of money at stake. Delays in a project could cost us millions of dollars. It was a very small fee for us to pay for everybody to fly together and stay in a hotel relative to the costs of delays. Naturally when people are located in different places and working on different projects, documents don't get turned around fast enough and you're always waiting for somebody."

    So we thought, "Why not have a 'signing party' for our company?