article thumbnail

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.

IP 52
article thumbnail

7 Lessons They Don’t Teach You In Crowdfunding School

Startup Professionals Musings

Project your costs as diligently as your revenues. Keep all IP details close to the vest. Don’t forget to account for the time and cost of crowdfunding campaigns. Several crowdfunding successes have failed as a business. Don’t underestimate the amount of funding actually required.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Do It Right The First Time: Avoiding “Janitorial” Legal Work

Gust

Nevertheless, choosing to defer basic corporate housekeeping items can be disastrous in some circumstances, as when the failure to spend a few thousand dollars on legal fees to clarify IP ownership and equity arrangements comes back to bite a successful company to the tune of millions of dollars on the eve of a liquidity event. Good stuff!

IP 114
article thumbnail

How to Divide Founder Equity: 4 Criteria to Discuss

View from Seed

This needn’t be some terribly complex formula that tries to do a cost accounting of everyone’s contribution to the decimal point. Co-founder equity should have vesting periods (or lapsing repurchase rights) so if a co-founder departs substantially earlier than others, their stake in the business is accordingly smaller. Ideation/IP.

Equity 315
article thumbnail

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

Agile VC

This needn’t be some terribly complex formula that tries to do a cost accounting of everyone’s contribution to the decimal point. Co-founder equity should have vesting periods (or lapsing repurchase rights) so if a co-founder departs substantially earlier than others, their stake in the business is accordingly smaller.

Cofounder 255
article thumbnail

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

Agile VC

This needn’t be some terribly complex formula that tries to do a cost accounting of everyone’s contribution to the decimal point. Co-founder equity should have vesting periods (or lapsing repurchase rights) so if a co-founder departs substantially earlier than others, their stake in the business is accordingly smaller.

Cofounder 173
article thumbnail

Series Seed Financing Documents

www.seriesseed.com

It would be helpful to get a California standard employee manual, employee contract/agreements, IP ownership release to company, and confidentiality. All of those cost us as much if not more in legal time than the seed round. This is typically done in a founder stock purchase agreement which contains vesting.

Finance 40