Pinion Blog
Know What Your SAFE Buys You — Before the Round Prices
Our free SAFE Simulator makes post-money SAFE mechanics concrete: what you’ll own, whether the cap or the discount sets your price, and what an exit actually returns.
Most of our angel investments are on SAFE Notes (Simple Agreement for Future Equity). Every time something interesting happens with one of our investments, the very first thing I have to do is remind myself what the terms are for our investment and how the heck SAFEs work.
We built a free SAFE Simulator so you can make those mechanics concrete before you sign, not after. No account needed. Set the terms and watch what happens.
What it shows you
- What you’ll own. Enter your check, the valuation cap, the discount, and the next round’s terms. The simulator converts your SAFE the way the paperwork actually does, including the dilution from the new round, and shows your resulting ownership.
- Which term sets your price. For any given round, either the cap or the discount governs your conversion. The simulator tells you which one is doing the work, and the scenario table shows the exact pre-money valuation where control flips from one to the other.
- What an exit returns. Pick an exit value and see what your stake is worth and your multiple.
Why post-money SAFEs surprise people
The 2018 switch to post-money SAFEs made conversion math cleaner for founders and lawyers, but it moved the dilution burden in a way many angels still miss: your ownership is fixed against the post-money cap, and the dilution from the priced round itself comes out of everyone INCLUDING YOU. Two SAFEs with the same cap but different discounts can convert very differently depending on how the round prices. Sliding the round size and pre-money around in the simulator for five minutes will teach you more about this than most term-sheet explainers.
The SAFE Simulator is the first of a growing set of free tools for angel investors and small family offices — the Exit Waterfall Simulator, which shows what the liquidation preference stack actually pays at exit, is live as well. If there’s a calculation you find yourself doing on the back of an envelope before writing a check, ;et us know and we’ll consider adding it.