[fredwilson]

I wrote this from the heart. You can ascribe whatever agenda you want to believe. But I wrote this for founders and it is based on thirty plus years of working with founders. I don't want to see them get screwed and notes screw them over a lot

[pbiggar]

Thanks for saying that!

I don't have any agenda or ascribe any to you. All I think is that to the untrained eye, this post comes across as founder-unfriendly.

[throwaway23422]

Could you poke holes in his/her arguments? Or perhaps cite examples? The counterpoints seem convincing but, hey, I might be totally missing something.

For context, I'm a long-time fan of your writings and REALLY appreciate how much you've given to the community (with the only VC blog worth reading IMO). Just want to fully understand the issue at hand here.

[brudgers]

I believe that. Yet, I think founders getting screwed over is largely orthogonal to the type of instrument used to fund companies in the early round. The scruples and sophistication of the parties involved play will tend to play a bigger role.

Among the asserted merits of SAFE's when the came into the YC ecosystem was that it removed some of the distraction that trying not to get screwed over created for founders at 'demo day' or earlier stage companies. At the time, an investor's willingness to use a SAFE might have had an inverse correlation to their willingness to take undue advantage of unsophisticated founders.