Fred Wilson (always worth reading) has once again posted some views in the (perhaps a bit tired) debate about whether entrepreneurs should raise seed financing using convertible notes (or their close cousins, SAFEs) or priced equity. (Wilson’s original post was all the way back in August 2010.) Amazingly, though posted only a month ago, there are 98 […]
In a legal and business career that spans more years than I care to admit, I’ve worn many hats (some of them at the same time): entrepreneur, company founder, early employee, investor, and attorney. Understanding an issue from multiple directions means that, perhaps unusually among lawyers, goodcounsel typically counsels its startup company clients to implement […]
You’ve landed that dream job and you’re excited to get started. The company is even throwing in some stock options! Since you will be an instrumental part of the company, you might think that the company is poised to take off and those options are going to be super valuable. “Sweet,” you say to yourself. “Where […]
The adage, “you have to have money to make money” really hits home when you are reviewing the budget needed to launch a business. Starting a business is expensive, and we understand that many of the entrepreneurs and businesspeople that we represent are trying to “bootstrap it,” especially at the outset of a new venture. Saving money […]
You get peanuts for working at goodcounsel! And jerky. Our new tagline: goodcounsel – we eat jerky, so we don’t have to be jerky.
In the days of yore, when dinosaurs roamed the earth (or thereabouts), goodcounsel offered “fractional general counsel” services. The idea of providing part-time counsel to growing, entrepreneurial companies (like those for which I had previously worked) was sound, but offering it a certain number of days each month was, in retrospect, flawed. If the billable […]
Would you like to accept small investments in your company from your Aunt Rose, your brother-in-law Bobby and your best friend from high school? Many people are surprised to learn that, unless these friends and family members are high-net worth investors, this is not the kind of thing that is safe to do – not, at least, if you […]
With some regularity, clients tell me that they want to issue employee equity that represents a fixed percentage of the company, not subject to dilution. What startup company founders should realize is that giving out equity containing an “anti-dilution” feature is an extraordinary and unusual benefit, one that should be agreed to only in exceptional circumstances.
66% of small law firms on Mac. But limitations of Word for Mac deny us software options @officeformac #ClioCloud9 pic.twitter.com/PajPntNGvL — Kenneth Obel (@MyGoodCounsel) September 23, 2014 I tweeted this earlier today. To add a little detail: I’ve long been interested in “document automation” and “document assembly” as a way to make the document drafting […]
Last year, I posted about the silly lawyer drafting practice of representing a number with both numerals and words. It’s a bad habit that many lawyers continue to use unquestioningly, and as I pointed out in that post, it can lead to potentially problematic contractual inconsistencies. I continue to come across examples of the problem. Here’s another. […]