TBC 138: Do SAFE investors need to be accredited? (Interview with Aaron Ginsburg @ Fenwick)

I finally brought a guest onto The Back Channel, and it’s for a good reason. A founder hit me with a question about SAFEs that made me pause a bit longer than I’d like to admit. The topic: whether a startup can accept money from someone who isn’t accredited in the US, and what that even means when the investor lives abroad.

So I called up Aaron Ginsburg, partner at Fenwick, who spends his days helping startups and early investors avoid mistakes that later turn into headaches. We get into why the accredited investor rule exists, who actually carries the risk if you bend the rules, how foreign investors fit into the picture, and why Reg S sometimes solves things but adds its own twists.

If you’ve ever raised on SAFEs, are about to, or have no idea what you signed last time someone wired you money, this one clears up a bunch of stuff founders usually gloss over. Casual chat, real details, zero legalese overload.