Effects of Note Conversion on Dilution

From

editione1.0.2

Updated August 29, 2023
Angel Investing

You’re reading an excerpt of Angel Investing: Start to Finish, a book by Joe Wallin and Pete Baltaxe. It is the most comprehensive practical and legal guide available, written to help investors and entrepreneurs avoid making expensive mistakes. Purchase the book to support the authors and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.

While note conversion terms can be written in slightly different ways, for our purposes, we will use a simple example where the stock price using the valuation cap conversion option was specified to be calculated as follows: Valuation cap divided by the issued and outstanding securities immediately prior to the sale of the preferred. The valuation cap was $3M. The number of issued and outstanding securities was 10,345,000 per the cap table in Figure 3. The price per share is therefore $3M/10,345,000 or $0.28999517.

The 5% interest on the $400K in notes would have generated an additional $20K in the intervening year, so the convertible note investors will be converting $420K into shares at $0.28999517. Running the math, the convertible note holders will get $420K/$0.28999517 = 1,448,299 shares. So the conversion of the notes before any other actions would have the cap table looking like this:

Figure 4: Cap Table Accounting for the Conversion of the Convertible Notes

Shares or OptionsIssued and OutstandingFully Diluted
Founders10,000,00084.79%77.23%
Employees345,0002.93%2.66%
Convertible Note Investors1,448,29912.28%11.19%
Issued and Outstanding11,793,299100.00%
Option Pool Available1,155,0008.92%
Total Fully Diluted12,948,299100.00%

Option Pool Top-Up

Now the option pool has to get topped up such that it will be 15% of the fully diluted shares after the dilutive effect of the preferred stock sale. Because the preferred stock sale will cause a 20% dilution (selling 20% of the company) across the board, the option pool must be 18.75% prior to being diluted by the preferred stock:

Figure 5: Cap Table Accounting for the Increase in the Option Pool

You’re reading a preview of an online book. Buy it now for lifetime access to expert knowledge, including future updates.
If you found this post worthwhile, please share!