We started this because we lost the deal
we didn't know we were losing.
Founders sign term sheets they don't fully understand every week. Most of them get told the terms are "standard." Most of the time, they're not. Turnsheet is the tool we wished we had — open, free for founders, brutally honest about what's actually in the document.
One bad clause, one founder.
In 2024, a founder we know — call her R — signed a Series A at what looked like a market-fair valuation. The lead investor was reputable. The deck was clean. The term sheet looked "industry standard."
Three years later, the company exited at $42M. The investors put in $8M. The participating liquidation preference and a pay-to-play clause meant R, who built the thing, walked away with under $300,000 — less than a year of her old salary.
The terms were standard, in the sense that other people had agreed to them before. But they weren't fair, weren't necessary, and would have been cut in half if she'd had a benchmark to point to in the room.
We built Turnsheet so the next R has the benchmark before she signs. Not after.
Four principles. No compromises.
- 01
Founders never pay
Not now, not after launch, not for the 'pro' tier we don't have. The cost of a single missed clause is bigger than any subscription we could ever charge. Investors and law firms pay for scale; founders use it free, forever.
- 02
The rubric is open
Every weight, every flag, every formula behind the Founder Fairness Score is published at /methodology. If you don't understand why your term sheet got the score it did, you can audit us — and disagree publicly.
- 03
We don't sell deal data
Anonymised aggregates power the regional benchmarks. Identifiable contents — your company, your investor, your numbers — never leave the analysis. They're auto-deleted after 30 days unless you save them.
- 04
Plain English, always
If a flag explanation needs a lawyer to interpret, we wrote it wrong. Every clause gets a one-sentence summary, a dollar example, and the exact counter-language to push back. Your lawyer signs off — but you walk in already knowing.
A small team, building in public.
Turnsheet is built by the team behind UNOCU — a company focused on capital independence for founders. We ship publicly, we publish our methodology openly, and we ask for help when we're wrong. The full names, photos, and bios go up here once we close the seed round; until then, every commit is signed with team@unocu.com and you can read every line of the code at github.com/unocu/turnsheet.
Reading every term sheet so you don't have to.
The model, the rubric, the API. Lives in the code.
Qualified VC counsel reviewing every flag in the library.
We ship the changelog the same week we ship the code.
Every release, every flag we add to the library, every methodology change is published openly. If we get something wrong — and we will — you'll see it corrected in the next entry, with the reasoning.
Email beats forms. Always.
Press, partnerships, or just a question about a clause we missed — write to the team and we'll write back.
- TEAM team@unocu.com
- CODE github.com/unocu/turnsheet
- PARENT unocu.com
Read every clause.
Free during beta. We email you when your wave opens.