MentorHours with Michael Buckworth, Managing Partner at Buckworths

Description

This Level39 member-only mentoring session helps founders evaluate venture capital term sheets and negotiate investment terms with more confidence in real-world fundraising conversations. MentorHours39 with Michael Buckworth features Michael Buckworth, Managing Partner at Buckworths, sharing a practical framework for spotting which provisions protect investors fairly and which provisions can quietly reduce founder value.

The discussion covers liquidation preferences and long-term outcomes, anti-dilution structures and what counts as reasonable downside protection, and how to define Investor Majority for consent rights. The session also breaks down good leaver and bad leaver clauses and treatment of unvested shares, tag and co-sale rights that can create unexpected constraints, and when secondary sales make strategic sense versus when secondary sales create future problems.