Governance/Control – Founder/CEO Mark Pincus has sold a good amount of his stock and owns <20% of shares outstanding, but now essentially has unilateral voting control of the company. So I can appreciate why public stock investors would be leery of Zynga and why the stock price has been punished recently. 2.2-2.3B MORE >>

Indeed, you must make sure that all of the shares of common stock issued by the corporation to the founders are subject to vesting restrictions – which means that ownership of the shares would vest over time (instead of all of the shares being owned outright on day one).  IP Ownership.  Any IP created or acquired by a founder (e.g., MORE >>

Having covered all the bases to ensure that your corporate name is available, the domain name can be acquired, and the name doesn’t infringe any existing trademarks (as we discussed last week ), now is a good time to look at the categories of intellectual property (IP) that are relevant to most startups. Instagram is a textbook example.) MORE >>

Ask crowdSPRING: Can Royalty-free Stock Be Used For Logo Design? business crowdsourcing design How To start-up tips bitmapped font commercial fonts copyright copyright act design patent EULA font software fonts glyph intellectual property ip law opentype postscript trademark truetype typefaceHow is a font different from a typeface? MORE >>

4) Type of Shares: Common Stock. 10) Consideration for Founders Shares: Cash & IP. 11) Handling of “Lost Founders&# : Lock Down the IP (then Wish Them Well). Here’s what I’d do in the beginning: Incorporation. 1) Entity Choice: Corporation or Corporation. 2) State of Incorporation: Delaware. Hell Yes. MORE >>