Introducing the CAFE

A “continuous SAFE” for always open equity offerings

We founded Fairmint to transition the world toward a stakeholder capitalism. Our decade-long experience as entrepreneurs and investors has helped us forge our conviction that tomorrow’s successful companies will be those that let their community participate in their success. This is why Fairmint exists: to give founders the opportunity to turn their equity into their most powerful community engagement tool.

Today, we’re announcing the CAFE: Continuous Agreement for Future Equity.

We partnered with Collins Belton from Brookwood Law and Gabriel Shapiro from Belcher Smolen Van Loo LLP, to create the CAFE as a new alternative to the SAFE. The CAFE addresses the expectations we gathered from hundreds of discussions with founders, investors & stakeholders:

• Founders want more long-term control of their company,
• Stakeholders want access to the financial upside of companies they love and use,
• Investors want increased liquidity on their investments.

The CAFE has been designed to improve on the SAFE. Like the SAFE, it allows for high-resolution financing with some key characteristics. Most notably, subject to applicable law (which may require the observation of holding periods or other securities law compliance requirements, depending on jurisdiction), it is designed to achieve three essential features:

1. Accessible to Qualifying Investors and Stakeholders. Anyone in the world who supports the company’s product or mission and qualifies to participate under applicable law is able to buy or earn CAFE, anytime, easily and online.
2. Digital. The CAFE makes companies’ equity programmable. Using the CAFE, founders can create automated and scalable stakeholder incentivization plans to let their key stakeholders earn CAFE according to the rules they set. Software is finally eating equity.
3. More Liquid. We created the CAFE as a standard digital security. As such, subject to applicable law, it has the potential to leverage decentralized AMMs as well as securities exchange platforms to enable easy trading of CAFE.

We designed the CAFE to be a digital, open and scalable SAFE. Here is an overview of how the two compare. For more details, we invite you to consult the CAFE FAQ.

“I’ve been an entrepreneur and an investor for more than a decade and the CAFE is the financial instrument I was dreaming of both as an entrepreneur and an investor”
Joris Delanoue — co-founder & COO of Fairmint

The CAFE is the perfect combination between the SAFE and Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Using the CAFE, companies can get the most value out of their equity by aligning the financial interest of founders, investors and stakeholders at large to the financial success of the company. The CAFE is a win for everyone:

“The future belongs to companies that create value with their stakeholders. As a founder, creating alignment with your community is the biggest competitive advantage you can build. That’s why we created the CAFE.”
Thibauld Favre — co-founder & CEO of Fairmint

Running a CAFE offering is possible today. If you’re interested, fill out this form to get early access to Fairmint.