A SAFE without a cap is nice though for an early company, especially if it's optional. A SAFE like this means that you're effectively raising at a Series A valu

A SAFE without a cap is nice though for an early company, especially if it's optional. A SAFE like this means that you're effectively raising at a Series A valuation but during your pre-seed stage. The most obvious effect of this to me is that it will gives your Series A investors a little less, either that or you'll take more dilution at Series A if your investors won't budge. Is that what you mean by "precisily controlling dilution"? That's counteracted, fortunately, because at the current valuations that many companies are raising a Series A at, $375k isn't a big hit. (I've seen Series As from 20m up to 150m these days) What I see as the major upside here is: Companies gain the ability to take a little less $ when raising pre-seed/seed SAFEs with harsher restrictions. Most SAFEs at that stage have some sort of investor incentive either as a "valuation cap" or a "discount" (at least the standard YC SAFEs[0]). For many companies, at least pre-pandemic, these caps were usually around $10-15m post-money (you raise $1m at $10m post-money, your investors get 10%, so you're saying your company is worth $9m). Of course, SAFEs can screw you too if you don't hit your valuation goals. So YCs $375k SAFE, if you have to raise a Series A at a low valuation, will hurt you more because you might have specific $ goals in mind that you can't budge on. But, at least having an extra $375k early on will help more companies, on average, avoid these "Series A downrounds" more frequently by giving them more runway. There is always going to be pros/cons when raising investment. At least with this, I feel like this makes the world a little more founder-friendly for early stage companies. Is my take approximately in-line with what you're thinking? 0: https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/ https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/