Nearly 80% of the early-stage financing on AngelList is now done through SAFEs. The earliest round of financing a company raises is typically done with a convertible instrument, rather than a priced equity round. However, priced equity rounds are long, expensive, and opaque legal documents—all adversarial attributes for early-stage startups. In contrast, convertible instruments are typically a page or two long and lay out, simply, the transaction and conversion terms. There are two major types of convertible instruments that startups use: convertible notes and SAFEs (“Simple Agreement for Future Equity”). SAFEs were introduced by YCombinator in 2013, and although initially the market had concerns whether a SAFE would ever be more than a promise on a piece of paper, since then there has been an uptick in their use and many cases of conversion into real stock. Despite a broad class of early stage investors still not having experience with SAFEs, AngelLists data shows that Silicon Valley has largely moved over to using SAFEs over the previously preferred convertible notes. With the right approach, SAFEs could become the preferred method of choice for investors beyond the Bay area.