Pre Employment Agreement Sample: Fill & Download for Free

As others note, you should have either a stock purchase agreement (if you were granted shares directly) or a stock option grant notice and agreement (if you were granted options). If options, you should seriously consider "early exercise" or a routine exercise of your vested shares, depending on the price and some other factors, and that would involve speaking with the company and executing some exercise documents, samples of which would have been included along with your option grant.It is good practice to also ask for a copy of the company's stock plan, certificate of incorporation, and bylaws.If you never received any of these documents, then you likely do not have equity, regardless of what the company may have promised you in your offer letter / employment agreement or other communications. You probably ought to get to the bottom of it if this is the case. If you don't know either way, there is nothing wrong with asking the company for a copy of the documents.There is no special document or notice that a company produces when a cliff date passes or stock otherwise vests. Companies that have signed up for a stock plan or cap table management service like eShares or some more traditional services will often have a portal where you can login to look at your vesting progress. Again, ask your company.

Yes. After learning hard lessons about the tension between investors and founders, I teamed up with my former business partner, Dan Flanegan, and my attorney, K. Adam Bloom, to create an open-source standard that you can attach to any bylaw agreement, term sheet, employment agreement, etc.It’s called the Founder Friendly Standard. It has 17 sections that can lay common disputes to rest such as who gets to vote, who gets liquidation preferences, what is the scope of non-compete, etc.Here are (3) three of the juiciest sections:1.1 Individuals who work for the company and are instrumental in its inception (“Founders”) receive a class of equity such as Common Stock which provides no less than twenty-four (24) votes to one (1) vote of stock held by investors or employees.If you’re the founder, why not control your own company? This can lead to better business performance for investors according to Credit Suisse’s Family 1000 research[1][1][1][1].2.1 Founders agree in writing they will give and receive performance reviews at the end of each fiscal quarter for the first four (4) years.Have you ever seen conflict fester and erupt? Famous examples include Bill Gates & Paul Allen, Evan Spiegel & Bobby Murphy, and Mark Zuckerberg & Eduardo Saverin. This provision facilitates giving and receiving feedback at least every quarter to address conflict before it becomes a risk to your startup.3.2 For at least the first two (2) years of operations, the company does not agree to binding arbitration with any investor.It’s a known fact that forced arbitration between parties of unequal bargaining power[2][2][2][2] is unfair. And since arbitration is often more expensive than regular court, wouldn’t it be in the investor’s best interest to go along here to save costs?The full text of Founder Friendly Standard is available here. I encourage you to read it and send it to your attorney for your next conversation. See the “Quick Links” menu at the top of the standard. If you are papering a deal, your attorney can download and customize our free template term sheet. If an investor sent you paperwork, your attorney can compare it to the Founder Friendly Standard with our free attorney review form. You can download these resources without even providing your email address.Our attorney review form helps you organize analysis of the legal issues that can determine whether you run your startup or take orders from investors. We used the same review form as a starting point for the below infographic which compares popular term sheets to Founder Friendly Standard.Founder Friendly Standard v. other term sheets [Infographic]Click for an interactive infographic comparison of Founder Friendly Standard to term sheet templates like the Y Combinator Safe, 500 Startups KISS, NVCA Model Legal Docs, etc. In the interactive version, you can click on individual bars to reveal attorney commentary about each issue.What’s in it for investors?Healthy financial returns. I’ve researched how the Founder Friendly Standard combined with optionality can deliver better returns than today’s angel investing and venture capital methods. The book is called: Grays Sports Almanac for Venture Capital: A new standard for optionality to beat the odds.Footnotes[1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/the-cs-family-1000-in-2018-en.pdf[1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/the-cs-family-1000-in-2018-en.pdf[1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/the-cs-family-1000-in-2018-en.pdf[1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/the-cs-family-1000-in-2018-en.pdf[2] unequal+bargaining+power+arbitration+unfair - Google Search[2] unequal+bargaining+power+arbitration+unfair - Google Search[2] unequal+bargaining+power+arbitration+unfair - Google Search[2] unequal+bargaining+power+arbitration+unfair - Google Search

OK, to start with, big red flag that you say the right guy. Yes, I know, odds are it will be a guy. But you need to strip away all the bullshit from your mental image of the right person, and gender is definitely in the bullshit category. List your weaknesses. Ideally the person you hire will be strong where you are weak. If your list is empty, hiring is not your top priority problem.If you don't already have one, write up a description of your procedures. Ask the candidate to critique it.Pre-interview, give the candidate access to samples of your source base (even it you have to ask for a signed non-disclosure agreement). Ask for a critique. Provide at least one sample each of your best and worst code. No matter how technically capable somebody is, they have to be able to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly in your source base. Without turning into Meltdown Mike.Ask to look at any open source they have written.Ask if you can see samples of their code written for previous employers (even it you have to sign an NDA). Aside from maybe getting to see the candidate's work, this may tell you a lot about how the candidate relates to supervisors and co-workers.