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Dear Founders: Here Are Three IP Mistakes to Watch-Out For

Scott Edward Walker

Over the past six months, my firm has been engaged by a number of startups with significant intellectual property (“IP”) problems. In a couple of cases, the founders played lawyer on their own; in the other cases, the founders either used (i) a Web service that did not address IP issues or (ii) an inexperienced law firm.

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How to Scale a Venture Capital (or Private Equity) Fund

David Teten

. – Build out low-cost force multipliers such as scouts , Advisors, Entrepreneurs in Residence, Venture Partners, and so on. Sophisticated VC and private equity funds have a wide array of options for leveraging outside operating executives. All of the strategies above have very modest fixed cost.

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The Legal Side of Entrepreneurship

YoungUpstarts

Craig Schmitz, a partner in the Technology Companies Group at law firm Godwin Proctor LLP who works on corporate, governance, board and fundraising issues, and Erika Fisher, an associate in the firm’s Business Law Department who deals with IP, fielded questions about the legal issues startups face. ” The Cost of Financing. .”

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Flexible VC, a New Model for Companies Targeting Profitability

David Teten

From traditional equity VC, Flexible VC borrows the option to pursue and reap the rewards of an outsized exit. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. Equity Ownership. Yes, typically preferred equity. On average, founders own just 43% of equity by Series B , declining thereafter. Flexible VC offers you this.

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How to Divide Founder Equity: 4 Criteria to Discuss

View from Seed

Editor’s note: Understanding how to divide founder equity at a startup can be tricky, even to the point of reaching emotional riffs between founders. Below, Lee Hower offers advice for approaching these equity discussions objectively and properly. Sometimes co-founders put off the equity split question for some time.

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Punch & Pie: How Should Co-Founders Divide Equity?

Agile VC

As a result, one of the trickier things co-founders tackle is determining the equity split amongst the founding group of individuals. Across both the startups I’ve personally been involved in (PayPal and LinkedIn) and the startups in which I’ve been an investor, I’ve seen a broad range of co-founder equity splits.

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Can You Replace Lawyers With Software?

The Startup Magazine

You need lawyers to help you with incorporation and IP creation. However, what you don’t need is lawyers’ prohibitive fees, which can cost your startup hundreds of thousands of dollars — even millions — in just the first few years. If IP isn’t terribly important to your startup, you can seek alternative legal solutions.