Kirsty Nathoo

Kirsty Nathoo explains how startup founders can manage cash and avoid running out of money. She shows how to track burn, runway, revenue growth, and whether a company is on a path to profitability, and stresses reviewing those numbers regularly and honestly. She advises accounting for rising expenses, keeping founders responsible for understanding financial reports, and hiring carefully before product-market fit. Founders should plan as though they will not raise more money and start fundraising early enough to preserve their options.

Kirsty Nathoo explains how SAFEs work, how they differ from convertible debt, and what founders should understand in their terms and conversion mechanics. She shows how post-money SAFEs make it easier to estimate ownership sold, then walks through dilution as a company hires employees, expands its option pool, and raises a priced Series A. The examples illustrate how SAFE conversion, option-pool increases, and new investment change ownership percentages. She closes with practical advice: track dilution, understand the documents, and avoid pushing valuation caps higher than necessary.

Carolynn Levy and Kirsty Nathoo explain how Y Combinator’s SAFE works as an early-stage investment instrument, including its valuation cap, conversion math, and what happens in acquisitions, failures, or when a company stays private. They walk through a cap table example to show how options pools and later investment affect ownership. They also cover signing and reviewing SAFEs, protecting investor rights, and modeling possible outcomes. Their closing advice is to support founders, tolerate pivots and failure, and be patient.