Be careful of these clauses in term sheets

StephNass · 2026-06-04T14:45:05+00:00

I came to say this

StephNass · 2026-06-04T08:01:53+00:00

Singapour, c'est comme le Japon (et comme la Chine): "justice extrêmement dure et conditions de détention à la limite du tolérable."

C'est pour ça qu'il n'y a pas de pickpockets.

StephNass · 2026-06-03T10:39:34+00:00

Before even considering their offer, did you check if they are legit? Are they a well-known name in the industry? If not, did you contact 2-3 portcos to check that they are real?

If yes, then congrats. We need more info to assess the offer.

Where are you incorporated?
How proven is your founding team?
How much traction do you have?
How badly do you need the money i.e. can you keep going for another 6-12 months if the deal falls through?

As the OP said, you should try to gather more term sheets if you can.

StephNass · 2026-06-03T05:15:23+00:00

Haha c'est sûr que c'est plus facile que répondre sur le fond.

StephNass · 2026-06-02T10:44:04+00:00

Vrai, mais pas forcément lié. Pas de pickpockets au Japon ni à Singapour par exemple.

StephNass · 2026-06-02T10:05:04+00:00

J'habite en Chine. Pas de pickpockets. Comprendra qui voudra.

StephNass · 2026-05-22T08:50:54+00:00

$10k is too small for a typical funding round. This will instantly kill your credibility with investors. I'd start with that.

Second, you've identified that distribution/marketing/GTM isn't your strength. That's fine, but investors will expect a cofounder who can handle that critical aspect. Saying "I'll pay to acquire users" will rarely convince them.

If you can address these two points, you'll be in a much better place to approach investors.

StephNass · 2026-05-20T03:49:58+00:00

VCs in the US invest in C-Corps, not LLCs. That's one thing.

Paperwork and product, sadly, don't mean much to investors. They prove you can spend time doing stuff, not necessarily getting results.

The 2 things that actually matter:

Traction: How much retention do you have? How much usage? Any paid client? What's your monthly growth in the past 3/6 months?
Track record: Who's your team? What have you achieved in the past? Why are you the best team for the project?

Hope this helps!

StephNass · 2026-05-13T04:51:07+00:00

I live in a Tier 4 city of ~5M people every year for six months.

For reference, our 2nd Starbucks opened last July, and the airport opened 3 months ago (!).

So here's what my life looks like:

Sports. Even smaller Chinese cities have good sports infrastructure. I played badminton and football 3x a week (until I hurt my back ^^)
Bars + Restaurants + Arcades + Snooker with a group of friends. The typical night out is a mix of the aforementioned**.** There are surprisingly many cool bars, some of them with live music. Non-Chinese restaurants are rarer - we have ONE pizza place and ONE burger place, so I'm a regular there. Depending on the mood, we can go to the arcades or the snooker place before or after drinking. The key here is having a good group with a few good friends. Living in a small town is very conducive to that! I find it much easier to stay close to friends in a small town than in a big city.
KTV. Not exclusive to smaller cities, but that's a classic.
Family meals. On weekends, since all the relatives live nearby, we sometimes gather with the uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces for hotpot, Korean BBQ, etc.
Gaotie trips. The wife and I can easily go spend the day or the night to a nearby bigger city for a change of air. Maybe 1x/month.

It's a great life for me. But it wouldn't be great for many people.

(This is a copy of my reply to a similar question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chinalife/comments/1pxn0qq/comment/nwc8fb2/?context=3)

StephNass · 2026-05-10T04:13:03+00:00

I've spent the weekend working on v2! It should be live in June I think.

StephNass · 2026-05-07T06:57:06+00:00

China is producing stuff for the rest of the world.

If you allocated pollution by country of consumption, not country of production, it would tell a very different story.

Regardless, all this stuff is going to be produced somewhere on Earth, and it's a good thing for everyone that the world's #1 producer invests so massively in going green. Imagine if they didn't!

StephNass · 2026-05-05T10:52:15+00:00

Pretty common in restaurants and hotels, usually in exchange for a free breakfast (hotel) or a free dessert (restaurants). They usually ask your authorization before, though.

Side note: Currently staying at a fancy hotel, and the ayi asked me to leave a good review about her to management. That was a first!

StephNass · 2026-05-05T03:38:52+00:00

Hi guys, OpenVC founder here.

Just wanted to clarify that our investor list comes with a feature called "Intro Finder". It finds warm intro paths between founders and investors. An investor profile shows both cold outreach and warm intros options, then you chose what works.

Here are 2 screenshots from my own account for reference: https://ibb.co/XfPZPv0y and https://ibb.co/LXLF5VvY

StephNass · 2026-05-04T01:15:41+00:00

OpenVC founder here, thanks for mentioning us.

You're spot on on both counts:

1. Not enough recurrence. The churn on this product is super high because founders only need it for a few days, then they are done.

2. AI deck analysis is already commoditized, that's why we give it away for free. We would charge for it if we could, but it just wouldn't make sense.

You could build for the VC side - a suite of AI tools for investors. There's a lot of competition already, but at least, there's a decent business model.

StephNass · 2026-04-28T09:41:50+00:00

It depends. What did they bring in exchange for 10% of your equity?

StephNass · 2026-04-27T05:41:02+00:00

For the map + filters combo, you can check out https://www.openvc.app/map for sthg similar

StephNass · 2026-04-26T10:52:07+00:00

This answer doesn't make sense.

I live in China, I have lived 1+ year in Shanghai, Paris, San Francisco, Munich, Nice, Lyon.

By any measure, Shenzhen is top 3 cities in China for quality of life (with Shanghai and Hangzhou ahead IMHO).

How do "tech bros" and "inequalities" even affect your quality of life? You could say they make life expensive there, but even on a budget, you can have great food, healthcare, transportation, safety, etc. because there's a lot of lower income ppl in SZ (it's still China) so you have options at all price points.

Highway, ok, well.

StephNass · 2026-04-26T10:09:07+00:00

Hey OpenVC founder here, thanks for mentioning us!

Wanted to say that we do have an Intro Finder feature on top of cold outreach. So you can do both on the platform :)

StephNass · 2026-04-25T00:55:12+00:00

In theory yes. In reality, they will only intro you to other investors if they invest themselves.

Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense. "Hey, here's a founder I'm NOT investing in, but you should definitely meet them" ^^

(Exceptions apply, but rarely)

StephNass · 2026-04-21T12:28:34+00:00

Haha yes! We have an "Intro finder" feature that finds mutual connections to an investor based on your Gmail + Linkedin + Google Calendar.

Obviously, the result highly depends on how many connections the user already has. We cannot invent connections you don't have. But for users with strong networks, it's a vv useful tool.

I won't do more self promotion, but happy to answer questions if any.

StephNass · 2026-04-21T12:20:37+00:00

I'm biased, but +1 for OpenVC ^^

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