Startups & Emerging Companies

Practice Contacts

Baldwin, Keith Gormley , Bentcover, Brian S. , Bjerke, Bruce T. , Bond, Andrew J. , Buder, Don , Campbell, Stuart C. , Chan, Christina Y. , Davis, Steven C. , DeGroot, Clifford A. , Eckels, Jane , Esguerra, Adrian , Fumia, Mark J. , Gibbs, Richard A. , Hull, Jay D. , LeMaster, Matt , Lowe, Randall B. , Martin, Chrys A. , Maughn, Ryan D. , Phillips, Michael C. , Saer, Kevin F. , Stewart, Milton R. , Tune, Sarah English , Wallin, Joseph M. , Whitford, Joseph P. , York, Ryan J.

Related Practices

Our startups and emerging company lawyers advise entrepreneurs and founders from company conception through public offering or sale. We are involved in all stages of the company’s life cycle, starting with choice of entity and founder arrangements, as well as seed, angel and venture financing. We also typically serve as outside general counsel, advising our emerging company clients on the various legal issues they confront.

We help you best position your company for success, connect you with financing sources and other sources of strategic assistance. Specifically, we routinely advise our emerging company clients with respect to:

Choice of entity
Founder's and shareholders' agreements
Equity financings, including structuring of angel and venture capital financings
Intellectual property issues, including patent, copyright and trademark protection and inbound and outbound licensing agreements
Employment law counseling
Employee benefits matters
Litigation strategy and execution

Our startups and emerging company team supports emerging and early-stage companies across the technology spectrum including Internet, software, cleantech, biotech, game companies, medical devices and health care. We provide our clients a cross-practice spectrum of services, including—when appropriate—bringing our leading tax, employment, real estate and hospitality, media and entertainment, energy and other industry-specific experience to the table to best understand your industry from the inside out.

We are enthusiastic about developing alternative fee arrangements that align your incentives with ours, so you are confident we define our success based upon our ability to support yours.

Investor’s counsel
As investor’s counsel, we work closely with venture capital firms and angel investors to identify, structure and make investments in early-stage and maturing companies. We regularly:

Conduct due diligence investigations of potential portfolio companies
Negotiate the terms of the investment and investment documents
Structure and organize investment vehicles to meet the needs of different classes of investors