What is a SAFE Agreement?

This template is written for startups, founders and early-stage investors, so that both sides can see what was promised, what it costs, and what happens if circumstances change.

The form collects 18 details across 6 areas: parties and contact details, scope and deliverables, payment and financial terms, dates, timing and duration, confidentiality and intellectual property, and legal protections and risk. The entries describing the investment do the most work, because every later clause about price, timing and completion refers back to them.

The recurring failure in this kind of arrangement is a conversion trigger that produces a number nobody expected. Business agreements tend to fail at the edges — deadlock between owners, automatic renewals nobody diarised, and liability caps that turn out to sit above the value of the contract.

Complete the fields, read the assembled SAFE agreement in the preview panel, then download it in PDF or Word format. The document follows widely used contract conventions, though it cannot account for every state rule or industry requirement — professional review is sensible before signing anything substantial.

What matters most in a SAFE agreement

Information and consent rights

Investors commonly get reporting rights and a veto over specified major decisions. Keep the veto list workable for the founders.

Interaction with future rounds

Consider how the instrument behaves at the next financing, on a sale, and if no round happens before maturity.

Conversion mechanics decide the economics

Valuation cap, discount and the trigger event determine what the investor ultimately receives. Model the dilution before agreeing.

When you need a SAFE agreement

  • When sensitive information is shared: Confidentiality terms should be signed before disclosure, not after. Information already shared without protection is very difficult to claw back.
  • When the investment needs defining: Write down what is included and what is not. A specific description is what turns an extra request into a chargeable variation rather than an argument.
  • When money changes hands: Record what the company owes, when each instalment falls due, and what follows a late payment. These are the clauses relied on most often and left vague most often.
  • When the information rights the investor keeps afterwards has value: Where something is still owed after each conversion or repayment date, that obligation needs its own words. Anything expected to survive the end of the agreement has to say so.
  • Before the investor starts: Put the SAFE agreement in place before anyone relies on it. An agreement signed after work has begun is far harder to enforce on the terms you actually intended.
  • When you already have the cap table before and after the round: If there is a brief, plan, specification or schedule, attach it. An agreement that refers to a record nobody has attached is only half a record.

What to include in a SAFE agreement

This generator collects 18 details. Here is what each group covers and why it matters when the document is relied on.

Parties and contact details

Everything else in the document hangs off these names: the investor carries the obligations, the company carries the payment, and both need identifying precisely enough to be found later.

Company Name
The company's registered legal name, including its corporate suffix such as LLC, Inc or Ltd.
Company Address
The company's registered office or principal place of business.
Counterparty Name
The full legal name of the other party entering into this agreement.
Counterparty Address
The counterparty's address for formal notices.

Scope and deliverables

This is the section that decides arguments. Describe the investment in instalments and against the cap table before and after the round, so that whether it has been delivered is a question of fact rather than opinion.

Purpose of Agreement
Why the parties are entering into the agreement. This helps a court interpret ambiguous clauses in line with the parties' actual intent.
Products or Services
The goods or services supplied, identified by specification, model or catalogue reference.
Performance Standards
The measurable standard the work must meet — response times, quality levels or service metrics.

Payment and financial terms

Payment terms are relied on more often than any other clause and left vague more often than any other clause. State the amount, the trigger, the deadline and what follows a late payment.

Commercial Terms
The core business terms — volumes, discounts, rebates, minimum commitments and review points.
Pricing
The unit prices or rate card, plus how and when prices may be revised.
Payment Terms
The invoicing cycle, payment window, accepted methods and consequences of non-payment.
Limitation of Liability
The cap on each party's financial exposure. Note that liability for fraud, death or personal injury generally cannot be excluded.

Dates, timing and duration

Where the investor depends on the company for something, say what happens to these dates when it arrives late. Otherwise the delay attaches to the wrong party.

Effective Date
The date the agreement takes effect. This can differ from the signature date, and it is the date obligations start running from.
Delivery Timeline
Lead times and delivery windows, plus what counts as a late delivery and the remedy for it.

Confidentiality and intellectual property

Confidentiality obligations should outlive the agreement. State that expressly here, because protection that ends with the contract is protection at exactly the wrong moment.

Confidentiality Obligations
The duty to keep information private, who it may be shared with internally, and the standard of care required.
Intellectual Property Rights
Who owns the IP created under the agreement, and what licence the other party receives.

Legal protections and risk

Decide who carries which risk and who insures it before an incident, not after. Afterwards, both readings of the silence are self-serving.

Warranties
The promises each party makes about quality, title and authority, and how long they last.
Termination Rights
The circumstances in which each party may end the agreement, distinguishing termination for convenience from termination for breach.
Governing Law
The legal system that applies and the courts that will hear any dispute.

Completing this SAFE agreement

Not stopping at each conversion or repayment date

The information rights the investor keeps afterwards continues past that point. Give it its own clause, because obligations that are merely assumed to survive often do not.

Attaching the cap table before and after the round

The cap table before and after the round carries most of the evidential weight here. Attach it as a schedule and refer to it by name in the body, rather than leaving it as an email nobody can find later.

Reading it as the other side would

Before signing, read the SAFE agreement from the counterparty's position and look for anything you would exploit. If you find something, so will they.

Filling in every blank

Unfilled placeholders are read against whoever produced the document. If a field genuinely does not apply, write "not applicable" rather than leaving a gap.

Dates that drive obligations

Use calendar dates rather than relative triggers such as "on approval", which cannot be measured. Dates determine when obligations start, when they end, and when someone is late.

Common mistakes to avoid

  1. Letting the investment change without repricing. Where the scope of the investment moves, the price and the timetable should move with it. Absorbing the first few changes sets the expectation that all of them are free.
  2. No cap on liability. An uncapped exposure on a modest fee is a bad trade for the investor. Set a cap that reflects the real value at stake, and carve out the things that should never be capped.
  3. No deadlock mechanism. Two equal owners who disagree can paralyse a business. Buy-sell provisions and a valuation method are far cheaper to agree at the start than to litigate later.
  4. Silence on who carries the risk. Decide before each conversion or repayment date, not after, which side bears loss or damage and who insures it. Once something has gone wrong, both parties read the silence in their own favour.
  5. Ignoring who owns the output. Say who ends up owning what is produced, and at what point ownership moves. Where nothing is written, ownership usually stays with whoever created it — rarely what the company assumes.

How to use this SAFE agreement generator

  1. Fill in the form. Enter the 18 details requested. Where an entry depends on a count — instalments, dates, amounts — put the number in rather than a description of it. Nothing is sent to a server — the document is assembled in your browser.
  2. Read the preview. The preview updates as you type and is editable, so you can adjust the wording before downloading — useful where a conversion trigger that produces a number nobody expected needs a sentence of its own that the standard clauses do not cover.
  3. Download and sign. Export as PDF to sign, or as Word to keep working on it. Store the signed version somewhere both the investor and the company can find it, along with the cap table before and after the round.

SAFE Agreement — frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a SAFE and a convertible note?

A convertible note is debt: it carries interest, has a maturity date, and must be repaid or converted by then. A SAFE is not debt — there is no interest and no maturity, and it converts only if a triggering event occurs, which means it may never convert at all. SAFEs are simpler and founder-friendly; notes give investors the leverage of a repayment date. Both dilute, and both warrant legal advice.

What records should I keep alongside the SAFE agreement?

The cap table before and after the round, the signed document itself, and a contemporaneous note of anything agreed afterwards. Most disputes turn on what was agreed at the time, and the party who can produce a dated record is the party who wins that argument.

Who should sign the SAFE agreement?

The investor and the company, through someone with authority to bind them. Where either is a company, that means a director or an officer with delegated authority — a signature from someone without it is a defence waiting to be raised.

Which state's law should govern this SAFE agreement?

Choose a state with a genuine connection to the parties or the subject matter — where a party is based, or where the work or property is located. A choice with no connection at all may not be respected, and for property or employment the local state's rules will often apply regardless of what the contract says.

Who owns the work produced under this agreement?

Whoever the agreement says owns it — and if it says nothing, the creator generally does. Paying for work does not transfer copyright by itself. If ownership is meant to pass to the client, the assignment clause needs to say so expressly, and it is common to make the transfer conditional on payment in full.

How long do the confidentiality obligations last?

Ordinary commercial information is usually protected for a fixed period of two to five years after the agreement ends, while genuine trade secrets are often protected for as long as they stay secret. Whichever you choose, state expressly that the confidentiality clause survives termination — otherwise the protection ends with the contract.

Can liability be limited to any amount?

Within limits. Parties can cap ordinary commercial liability, and a cap set against contract value or insurance cover is normal. But liability for fraud, death and personal injury generally cannot be excluded, and a cap so low it makes the obligations meaningless may be struck down as unreasonable.

Should every business agreement be reviewed by a lawyer?

Not every one. Routine, low-value or short-term agreements are commonly handled in-house from a solid template. Anything involving significant money, equity, exclusivity, long-term commitment or unusual liability is worth a review.