Point of order: Standardised termsheets are not the answer for startups

It's hard to judge the merits of the arguments posed by TC's guest authors, as they are invariably "what you'd expect," given the authors' profession -- i.e., always in their own best interest.

This obvious conflict-of-interest, combined with the discussion of semi-technical stuff (such as this particular article on legal terms), makes these posts impossible to evaluate on their own merits, and thus useless.

So what do you do when you are fresh out of university with a great idea and a great team with no cash. All you need is £15K to cover 3 months living expenses and roll out a first version of your app. You manage to convince some friends / family / fools to part with just enough to get you going.

The deal breaker is that everyone involved wants something on paper that they can trust covers their best interests. What goes on that piece of paper when there is no cash available to pay for a lawyer?

As someone who hasn't raised funds, but might be interested in doing so in the future, my interest in these sheets isn't so much saving money. I've followed these threads because it gives startups a baseline for what terms "should" be like. This jump starts the whole process. It would make you dive in a bit more when terms begin to deviate from these outlines.

I realize you get a crash course in these subjects when fundraising but how many companies out there go into the process with no idea of what half of these terms mean?