The short, mostly non-binding document laying out the headline terms of an investment (valuation, check size, board, preferences, vesting), signed before the lawyers start drafting the 100-page closing docs.
In 2021 a16z made its standard Series A term sheet publicly available, joining Sequoia (whose Series Seed terms have been semi-public for years). The move set a transparency baseline that smaller VCs increasingly match — the days of opaque, founder-unfriendly term sheets are largely over.
