A FAST Agreement (Founder Advisor Standard Template) is a standardized contract created by the Founder Institute that lets startups compensate advisors with equity instead of cash. It sets the advisor's role, an equity percentage based on company stage and level of engagement, and a standard vesting schedule, so founders and advisors can formalize the relationship in minutes instead of negotiating custom terms with a lawyer.
A FAST Agreement is a one-page, fill-in-the-blank template that governs the relationship between a startup and an advisor who trades expertise for equity rather than cash. The Founder Institute developed the Founder / Advisor Standard Template ("FAST") to help entrepreneurs in the startup launch programs it operates worldwide set up advisory boards and engage with mentors, and released the FAST Agreement to the public in 2011.
The Founder Institute has refined the document several times since its first release. On June 18th, 2026, the Founder Institute released Version 3, which includes enhancements such as the ability to localize the FAST Agreement into any legal jurisdiction where corporate law supports the granting of options or restricted stock without hiring a lawyer. The scale of adoption is part of what makes it the default choice for advisor equity: tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and advisors use the FAST Agreement per year to establish productive working relationships, trading advice and support for a standardized amount of equity.
For founders, the appeal is speed. With just a signature and a checkbox on the FAST Agreement, entrepreneurs and advisors can agree in minutes on how to work together, on what to accomplish, and on the right amount of equity compensation. That removes the back-and-forth of custom legal drafting for a relationship that, in most cases, doesn't need bespoke terms.
The template standardizes the handful of variables that actually matter in an advisor relationship, rather than leaving them open to negotiation each time. A completed FAST Agreement typically fixes:
Before finalizing any of these terms, the Founder Institute recommends a trial period. The Founder Institute recommends that an entrepreneur work with a potential advisor for at least one month and spend at least 8 hours together before discussing the FAST Agreement. That trial period matters because the agreement includes protection against a relationship that doesn't pan out: the FAST Agreement includes a three-month "cliff" on equity vesting, letting founders terminate an unproductive advisory relationship within the first three months without allocating any equity.
The FAST framework ties equity to two variables: how mature the company is and how involved the advisor commits to being. There are three levels of company maturity that influence the equity compensation, and three levels of engagement for an advisor that also influence the compensation: standard, strategic, or expert.
The Founder Institute's own example shows how the math plays out in practice. If an advisor provides an early-stage startup with an expert level of help by meeting with the team monthly, recruiting talent, and taking a customer call, that advisor earns 1% of the company in restricted stock or options vesting over two years. A similar level of engagement at a growth stage company earns just 0.6%.
Here's where founders should pause before defaulting to the template's suggested ranges: actual market data now runs well below FAST's original benchmarks. According to Carta's compensation data, advisors get far less than many founders think, with 0.12% at seed being the median and only the top 10% getting above 0.5%. At the pre-seed stage, Carta's 2024 data shows median advisor grants are declining, with pre-seed at 0.21% median, down from 0.25% in previous years, and only 10% of pre-seed advisors receiving 1% or more.
That gap between the FAST template's headline ranges and current market medians is worth flagging explicitly, because it's a common misconception: founders assume the FAST percentages are the norm, when in reality they represent an upper bound that most advisors never actually receive. Treat the template's percentages as a ceiling to negotiate down from, not a floor to negotiate up from.
This is the part most guides skip, and it's where founders run into trouble. A signed FAST Agreement is not the end of the process. It's a great starting point, not a sign-and-forget document. The parties still need the definitive agreements that actually issue the equity, such as an equity incentive plan and corporate approvals for options, or a Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement and board approvals for restricted stock.
In practice, that means three additional steps have to happen before the advisor actually owns anything:
Founders should always document equity grants in both FAST and a separate grant agreement, and the board of directors must approve them and record them clearly in the company's cap table. Skipping this step is one of the most common ways founders get burned in due diligence: a verbal or informal understanding with an advisor that never made it into the cap table creates a discrepancy investors will flag immediately.
It's also worth treating every advisor grant as a dilution decision, not a formality. An advisor is providing a service to your startup, similar to an employee, so you should regularly assess contributions against agreed-upon goals, and review your cap table before issuing any new equity since every grant dilutes existing shareholders. This is exactly the kind of check founders miss when they track advisor equity in a spreadsheet instead of a live cap table.
The FAST Agreement solves a specific, recurring problem for early-stage founders: how to compensate someone valuable when there's no cash to pay them. The FAST shines because of two core benefits, standardization and incentive alignment. Because it's standardized, it leaves little room for back-and-forth negotiation and saves legal costs. Advisors who have seen the template before trust it faster than a custom document, which shortens the time between "let's work together" and actually working together.
For founders using Seedling to manage their cap table, the FAST Agreement is one piece of a larger discipline: every advisor grant, no matter how small, needs to flow into the same ownership record as founder shares, employee options, and investor equity. A 0.25% grant looks trivial in isolation, but stacked across five or six advisors it can quietly consume a meaningful slice of the option pool before a single funding round closes.
The practical takeaway is this: use the FAST Agreement to standardize the conversation and speed up the handshake, but don't let the paperwork stop there. Push the equity grant through board approval, get it into a definitive agreement, and log it in your cap table the same day you sign. That's the difference between an advisor relationship that holds up under investor scrutiny and one that creates a mess to untangle at your next round.
Some common questions, answered
A FAST Agreement is a standard one-page contract created by the Founder Institute for startups that compensate advisors with equity instead of cash. It defines the advisor's role, equity percentage, security type, vesting schedule, termination terms, confidentiality and independent contractor status.
FAST bases advisor equity on the company's maturity and the advisor's level of engagement. Its suggested percentages can exceed current market medians, so founders should treat them as a ceiling to negotiate down from rather than a minimum entitlement.
Signing FAST does not issue the equity by itself. The board must formally approve the grant, the company must complete a Stock Option Agreement or Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement, and the grant must be recorded accurately in the cap table.