VC Deal Lawyer

You may have read my earlier post entitled Doing it Right the First Time:  The 15 Most Common, but Avoidable, Mistakes Made by High Growth Start-ups.  I wanted to add some additional articles/posts I’ve read since then that add some flavor to my post.  Check out the following:

When to Fire Your Co-Founders, by Simeon Simeonov [...]

Depending on who you are raising money from, your initial contact with the investor(s) will take different forms.  If you are raising friends and family money, then you will most likely use a private placement memo format along with a subscription agreement as your initial contact.  This is so because at the friends and family level, you [...]

Imagine you are half-way through due diligence on your Series A round and the venture fund’s counsel realizes that you never complied with federal and state securities laws when you raised angel money.  Or, imagine your early CTO hire does not have the level of experience he/she professed in the interview or on his/her resume and the company is [...]

On November 10, 2009 I attended the inaugural FashInvest conference in New York entitled “From Concept to Capital.”  Karen Griffith-Gryga and David Freschman, the founders of FashInvest, put on a wonderful event and are definitely heading in the right direction to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and branded and fashion company executives together under one roof.  The [...]

What are Angels? 
Angels are individuals that invest their own personal money in private companies, typically at a very early stage.  They are generally Accredited Investors under Reg D of the Securities Act of 1933 (meaning they have a net worth of at least $1M or that they made more than $200k the past three years [...]

I really enjoyed Seth Godin’s short entry entitled The Reason Riding a Unicycle is Difficult.  In fact, I generally enjoys his entries – as he posts often and even the short ones can be packed with thoughtful ideas.  Back to the entry – I can really appreciate his view of the binary nature of riding [...]

I recently attended the 2009 Early Stage East Venture Conference.  Very exciting day spent networking and listening to 8 minute pitches from 21 companies seeking funding at different stages.  On the whole, I thought the presentations were well done (although a few presenters seemed to forget that they only had 8 minutes). 
During the conference lunch I met [...]