Startup Incubators and Accelerators Editing and Proofreading Services

Equity of six percent buys twelve weeks, a check for $120,000, and a promise of access. Whether that was a fair trade is unknowable in March and obvious the following March. The document that should have made it assessable in advance is usually a page of alumni photographs and four abstract nouns. Programs that write in countable terms about what the equity buys receive fewer applications and noticeably better ones.

The documents we edit for Startup Incubators and Accelerators

Program terms and the equity documentation behind them are the first thing we are asked to put into plain language. Application guidance and selection criteria follow, together with founder-facing program descriptions, curricula, mentor briefs, and mentor agreements. We also edit demo day and investor showcase material, cohort communications and alumni resources, summaries of investment documentation, fund and sponsor reporting, program impact reports, corporate partnership propositions, workspace and membership terms, and grant applications written to fund the program itself. Our editors work on the document a founder should read twice before applying.

What the editing involves

What the equity buys is written honestly by almost nobody. Founders are offered access, network, mentorship, and visibility, four words that describe nothing and that anyone can claim. The countable version says how much cash arrives, whether $50,000 or $500,000, on what instrument, at what valuation or discount, and in which week it lands. It then says how many hours of scheduled contact a founder gets and with whom, separating program staff who are paid from mentors who are volunteers, because a founder plans the week around the paid staff rather than the volunteers.

Introductions are the other number worth printing. A program reporting that its last cohort received 400 investor introductions has said less than one reporting a median of nine per company with a range from two to thirty-one, because a total can be carried by two companies. What the program has never done belongs on the same page. A founder who discovers in week nine that there is no help with hiring has lost the quarter, and the line that would have prevented that loss costs nothing to print.

Terms deserve the same treatment as the offer. What the equity converts into, what happens to the instrument if the company never raises again, and whether the program holds pro rata or information rights afterward all belong in the founder-facing document. So does what a founder is required to do during the program, which at present sits only in the agreement. Physical presence is the requirement most often implied and least often stated, and a founder who relocates a team 500 miles on the strength of an implication has made the most avoidable mistake in this sector. We do not draft the terms or comment on them. The program and its attorneys settle those long before the copy reaches us.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including program terms, cohort information, and founder material. We are editors, not investment, legal, or startup advisors, and we offer no opinion on your terms, your valuation, or your program design. What we can do is state the offer in terms a founder can set beside another one.