Startups: SAFE notes, term sheets and board consents

The documents, round by round

• Term sheets: the headline terms of a priced round, agreed before the final documents are drafted.
• SAFEs: Y Combinator describes a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) as "a short contract an investor signs to fund your startup now in exchange for the right to shares of stock in your startup later", and says "All of the SAFE forms are free to download and use." Its standard forms for US companies come in three kinds: a valuation cap with no discount, a discount with no valuation cap, and an "Uncapped MFN" SAFE with neither. The company and each investor sign.
• Board and stockholder consents: approvals given without a meeting, such as issuing SAFEs, granting options or adopting a plan.
• The rest of the company file: advisor agreements, NDAs with partners and offer letters.

With Attest, each one is a PDF of up to 8 MB that you upload, with up to 20 signers.

Board and stockholder consents under Delaware law

For a Delaware corporation, the General Corporation Law covers both kinds of written consent:

• Board. "Unless otherwise restricted by the certificate of incorporation or bylaws", any action of the board or of a committee "may be taken without a meeting if all members of the board or committee, as the case may be, consent thereto in writing, or by electronic transmission" (section 141(f)). The consent is then filed with the minutes, "in the same paper or electronic form as the minutes are maintained".
• Signatures. Where the corporation law, the certificate of incorporation or the bylaws require or permit a signature, "the signature may be a manual, facsimile, conformed or electronic signature" (section 116(a)(2)), except for the documents section 116(b) lists, such as filings with the Secretary of State, the stock ledger and stock certificates (section 116).
• Stockholders. Section 228(a) reads: "Unless otherwise provided in the certificate of incorporation, any action required by this chapter to be taken at any annual or special meeting of stockholders of a corporation, or any action which may be taken at any annual or special meeting of such stockholders, may be taken without a meeting, without prior notice and without a vote, if a consent or consents, setting forth the action so taken, shall be signed by the holders of outstanding stock having not less than the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize or take such action at a meeting at which all shares entitled to vote thereon were present and voted and shall be delivered to the corporation in the manner required by this section." Under subsection (c), "A consent must be set forth in writing or in an electronic transmission", and it takes effect only if enough signed consents are delivered to the corporation "within 60 days of the first date on which a consent is so delivered". If the consent isn't unanimous, the stockholders who didn't consent must be given prompt notice (subsection (e)); see section 228.

A unanimous board consent fits the way an Attest document completes: it completes only when the last director signs. Directors sign in any order: every other director is emailed at once, and a director who sends it signs in the dashboard. The certificate of completion records each signer's name and signing time, the completion time is anchored on Horizen, a public blockchain, and the sealed PDF goes in your minute book. Companies formed in other states follow their own corporate law and bylaws.

Keep the cap, the discount and the investors private

A SAFE names its investor and, in two of Y Combinator's three US forms, a valuation cap or a discount; a term sheet sets out the valuation, the investors and the board seats. Most e-signature services describe their protection as encryption in transit and at rest, and describe no end-to-end mechanism, so their systems can decrypt the documents they store. We compared 21 e-signature services in October 2026, Attest and 20 others, and Attest was the only one that end-to-end encrypts every document, for every signer, by default.

With Attest, your browser encrypts each document before upload, with a new key for that document, and locks that key separately to each party's own key, so only the parties can open it, in their own browsers. What each signer fills in is encrypted in their browser too, and Attest stores the document only as ciphertext it can't read.

One document per investor. Send each investor's SAFE as its own document. Each is encrypted only to its own parties, so each investor can open their own SAFE and no one else's.

Titles and certificates. Attest does see the information around a document, such as its title, file name, your note and the signers' emails and names. Use titles such as "SAFE 07" rather than the investor and the cap, and choose Private under Verification, so only the parties see the certificate, which otherwise shows anyone with its link the title and each signer's name and signing time, among other details, never the document.

Due diligence: copies that prove themselves

The next investor's lawyers, or an acquirer's, may review every SAFE, consent and side letter, and ask which cap each investor agreed to and whether every director approved. Each Attest signature is made with a passkey, a cryptographic key only the signer controls, unlocked with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello or the device PIN, and registered to the signer's email address. It signs a statement that names the document's fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash, a short code calculated from the file's contents), the signer's entries and the signing time, and the completed agreement is anchored on Horizen, a public blockchain. Change one byte of the document, of any signer's entries or of the signed pages, and verification fails.

Every party holds the same sealed PDF, with its evidence, the original document and an open-source verifier attached inside. Counsel can check each copy for free at attest.datahubz.com/verify, and the verifier inside the PDF runs in any browser, even if Attest is gone, checking each signer's passkey signature, the original document, the pages you see and Attest's anchored record on Horizen.

When someone only needs to know a document was signed, not what it says, a signer can use Share proof to create a zero-knowledge proof, a proof that a statement is true which reveals nothing beyond the statement: here, that they, or they and a named co-signer, signed an agreement, and the date it was completed. The recipient sees the email addresses, the completion date, and that the proof is valid and where its record is anchored, never the document and its terms, its title or any other signer. See proving an agreement to a bank, landlord, investor or new employer.

How to send a SAFE

1. Open Documents in the menu (it reads Agreements on accounts that use every Attest tool) and click New agreement.
2. Give it a plain Title, such as "SAFE 07", click Attach the document to be signed and choose the final PDF.
3. Under Signers, type the investor's email address, and check Add me as a signer (sign in-app, no email) if you sign for the company.
4. Under Verification, choose Private.
5. Click Next: place the fields, place a signature field and a date signed field for the investor and for you, and click Create and send.
6. If the investor is new to Attest, Attest emails you once they have set up their key. Click Unlock it for … in that email (or open the agreement in Attest), confirm, and approve with your passkey: your browser releases it to them, never Attest.
7. Your own signature waits under Action needed, with no email: click Sign on the document's row and approve with your passkey. When both of you have signed, click View the signed copy, then Download signed copy.

For a board consent, add every other director with + Add signer, check Add me as a signer (sign in-app, no email) if you are a director, and keep Any order under Signing order, so every other director is emailed at once; place a signature field for each director.

What it costs

Your first 2 documents are free, in total. After that, the Signing plan is $5 a month for 20 documents sent for signature, and you can cancel any time. Investors and directors never pay, on any plan. For a round with more documents than that in a month, or to use Attest's other tools and the API, Pro is $49 a month with 10,000 records, one per document you send.