Founders make real decisions off these pages. They pick a state of incorporation, set a vesting schedule, sign a SAFE, or walk into a term sheet negotiation carrying numbers and definitions they read here. That means a mistake on this site is not a typo on a blog — it is a wrong assumption sitting inside somebody's cap table. This page explains, in plain terms, how we research, verify, date, and correct everything we publish, so you can judge for yourself how much weight to put on it.
The short version: every guide is drafted from primary sources, reviewed by a practicing attorney before it goes live, stamped with a last-updated date, and corrected in public when we get something wrong. The long version is below, section by section, because "trust us" is not a verification method.
Attorney Review Before Publication
No guide on this site is published on the author's word alone. Before anything goes live, the full text is reviewed by at least one attorney who currently practices startup and venture law and who works with the documents in question — term sheets, SAFEs, certificates of incorporation, invention assignment agreements — as part of their day-to-day practice. Reviewers are not asked to admire the prose. They are asked to break it: to check every legal claim against the source documents, to flag any statement that is true in one context but misleading in another, and to mark anything that has drifted out of date since the last financing cycle.
Review produces one of three outcomes. The guide publishes as drafted, which is rare on a first pass. The guide publishes after specific revisions, which is the normal case — typically a definition tightened, a market-standard range narrowed, or a caveat added where practice differs between Silicon Valley and everywhere else. Or the guide goes back for a rewrite, which has happened when a draft relied too heavily on how deals worked a few years ago rather than how they work now. We do not publish around a reviewer's objection. If the reviewer and the author cannot agree on whether a statement is accurate, the statement comes out.
One boundary we hold firmly: reviewer involvement does not turn a guide into legal advice, and it does not create any attorney-client relationship between you and anyone involved with this site. The disclaimer at the bottom of every page means what it says. Review raises the floor on accuracy; it does not replace advice about your specific facts, from your own lawyer, in your own jurisdiction.
What the Guides Are Based On
Our legal content is anchored to two bodies of material, and we say exactly which versions we rely on. First, Delaware corporate law — primarily the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL) as amended and in force in 2024, together with the Delaware Division of Corporations' published fee schedules and filing procedures. Delaware is the reference jurisdiction for this site because the overwhelming majority of venture-backed companies incorporate there, and because its statute and case law are what investors' counsel will apply in diligence. When we state a filing fee, a franchise tax rule, or a statutory requirement, we are stating the Delaware position unless we say otherwise, and we say so on the page.
Second, the standard venture documents. For early-stage financing, we work from Y Combinator's published SAFE documents — the post-money forms that have dominated pre-seed and seed financings since their 2018 revision — and from the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) model legal documents, including the model term sheet, as they stood in 2024. When we describe a provision as "standard," we mean it appears in, or is consistent with, those model forms and the market practice around them. When a provision is a known aggressive variant — a participating liquidation preference, a full ratchet, a cumulative dividend — we describe it as a variant, not as standard, regardless of how often any particular fund asserts otherwise.
Laws change and model forms get revised. The 2024 anchor is a statement of when our analysis was verified, not a promise that nothing has moved since. That is what the last-updated dates are for, and we explain them below.
Sourcing Standards: Primary Sources or Nothing
Every factual claim in a guide has to trace to a source we can name. Our hierarchy is strict. At the top: primary sources — the text of the DGCL itself, the actual YC SAFE documents as published by Y Combinator, the NVCA model term sheet and its companion documents, IRS guidance and forms for matters like the 83(b) election, and official fee schedules from the Delaware Division of Corporations. If a claim about a statute cannot be pointed to a section of the statute, it does not go in the guide.
One level down: secondary sources from practitioners — law firm client alerts, venture funds' published playbooks, and court decisions where they exist. We use these to characterize market practice (what term sheets actually contain this year, as opposed to what the model forms say) and to sanity-check interpretations. We do not rely on other startup blogs, forum threads, or social media posts as sources for legal claims. If we cannot verify it against a primary source or a reputable practitioner source, we either leave it out or label it plainly as an observation from experience rather than a rule.
Internal links follow the same discipline. When one guide cites another — the incorporation guide pointing to the 83(b) discussion, the term sheet guide referencing the SAFE dilution math — the underlying claim lives in one place, and the other pages link to it rather than restating it loosely. That way a correction lands everywhere at once instead of leaving contradictory copies scattered across the site.
How We Choose the Numbers in Examples
Every worked example on this site — the $500,000 SAFE at an $8M post-money cap, the $10M participating preference on a $25M exit, the dilution waterfall on the SAFE guide — uses invented, round numbers chosen for arithmetic transparency, not realism theater. We pick figures that divide cleanly so you can follow the math with a pencil: percentages like 6.25% that fall out of a $500,000 check on an $8M cap, exits sized so the preference stack shows its effect in whole dollars. The point of an example is to make the mechanism visible, and mechanism examples fail when the numbers require a spreadsheet to verify.
Two rules govern the examples. First, they are illustrative, not predictive: no example on this site is a claim about what your company is worth, what round you should raise, or what outcome you should expect. Second, the legal effect being demonstrated — who eats first, what the cliff does, how the pool shuffle shifts dilution — is checked against the real document mechanics before publication, so the arithmetic is invented but the law inside it is not. Where a range is genuinely market-dependent, such as typical seed valuations or pool sizes, we describe it as a range and say that it moves with the market, rather than pinning a false precision on it.
Last-Updated Dates on Every Guide
Every guide carries a last-updated date, and that date means something specific: it is the most recent day on which the entire guide was re-read against its sources, not the day someone fixed a comma. When we touch a page substantively — a fee figure, a statutory reference, a market-standard range, a recommended practice — we update the date. When a full scheduled review confirms everything is still accurate, we update the date too, because "we checked and it still holds" is information you deserve to have.
Guides are re-reviewed on a cycle, and event-driven reviews jump the queue. A statutory amendment to the DGCL, a new revision of the YC SAFE, an updated NVCA model document, or a market event that changes standard practice — each triggers an out-of-cycle review of every guide that touches the affected material. A date that looks old on a fast-moving topic is a signal to you: treat that page's specifics with more caution, and check the primary source before acting on it.
How Corrections Work
When we get something wrong, we fix it and we say so. Substantive corrections — a wrong figure, a misleading definition, a recommendation that events have overtaken — are logged publicly on our corrections page with the date, the page affected, and what changed. We do not silently overwrite mistakes on pages that founders may already have bookmarked, printed, or relied on. Trivial fixes (spelling, broken links, formatting) are corrected without a log entry; anything that could change a decision gets an entry.
Anyone can report an error. Write to research@venturelegalhub.com with the page, the claim you believe is wrong, and the source you're relying on. Reports that cite a primary source — a statute section, the document text, an official fee schedule — get reviewed first, because they can be verified fastest. We would rather log a correction than defend a mistake.
Conflicts Policy
Our conflicts policy is short because our structure is simple. Venture Legal Hub is not a law firm, does not practice law, and does not provide legal advice. We do not take on clients in any capacity, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading this site, emailing us, or interacting with anyone involved in producing it. Reviewing attorneys contribute to accuracy; they do not represent you, and nothing here should be read as them doing so.
We do not accept referral fees, placement fees, or compensation of any kind from law firms, banks, registered agents, incorporation services, cap table vendors, or any other provider mentioned — or deliberately not mentioned — in our guides. When a guide discusses a category of provider, the discussion is editorial judgment about what founders should know, not a commercial arrangement. If that ever changes, the change will be disclosed on the affected pages, not buried. Our revenue model and business details are set out on the business information page.
This methodology is itself a living document. When we change how we review, source, or date our content, this page is updated and the change is noted on the corrections log. If you have questions about how a specific guide was verified, ask us at research@venturelegalhub.com — the same inbox that handles error reports.