Startup Law and Fundraising for Entrepreneurs and Startup Advisors


Book Description

Entrepreneurship can be chaotic. Some chaos drives innovation. But legal chaos rocks many startups to their foundations, dashing dreams, jeopardizing jobs and investments, creating liabilities, and slowing innovation. Paul Swegle wrote Startup Law and Fundraising for Entrepreneurs and Startup Advisors to help startups avoid these pitfalls, including the pitfall of struggling to grow a poorly funded business. This is a practical book meant to help entrepreneurs and their advisors:-build on a solid foundation, -avoid costly legal and regulatory mistakes, and -raise the money needed for stability, innovation, and operational success. Startup Law and Fundraising is for everyone interested in business, business law, and startup fundraising. Its 550 pages cover an unmatched range of startup-focused concepts, tips, traps, strategies, and best practices. Fifty-one colorful startup case studies keep things interesting.Legal, governance and regulatory hurdles are covered in the book's first ten chapters. But surviving those hurdles is no guarantee of success. Many startups simply run out of money. Others are bedeviled by ill-advised early funding rounds. Startup Law and Fundraising devotes five chapters to creating and executing a fundraising plan around the principles of just-in-time finance and raising money from the right investors, in the right amounts, and on the right terms, whether from friends and family, angel investors, angel investing groups, seed funds, VCs, strategic investors, accelerators, or crowdfunding platforms.The final chapters fittingly cover the final chapters of startup life - optimizing an "exit" with a successful IPO or sale, or, as happens about 80% of the time, managing through insolvency and winding up.Startup Law and Fundraising provides the foundation for an entrepreneurial law and finance class at any level, including law school, MBA, undergraduate business, community college, or startup incubator.




Start-up Law


Book Description

This comprehensive Practical Guide provides direction on the wide array of legal questions and challenges that start-ups face. The Guide features analysis from five jurisdictions that represent a variety of legal traditions across different continents. Expert contributors address key legal issues for technology-based start-ups and entrepreneurs, as well as providing insights into the law and practice of the countries examined.




Acceleration


Book Description

When you're launching a startup, one of the most important elements is the legal work involved. Unfortunately, it's easy for many entrepreneurs to ignore startup legal work or make costly mistakes that could derail their business before it gets off the ground. But now there's help. In Acceleration, corporate attorney Ryan Roberts guides you thro.




Startup Law 101


Book Description




Venture Deals


Book Description

An engaging guide to excelling in today's venture capital arena Beginning in 2005, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, managing directors at Foundry Group, wrote a long series of blog posts describing all the parts of a typical venture capital Term Sheet: a document which outlines key financial and other terms of a proposed investment. Since this time, they've seen the series used as the basis for a number of college courses, and have been thanked by thousands of people who have used the information to gain a better understanding of the venture capital field. Drawn from the past work Feld and Mendelson have written about in their blog and augmented with newer material, Venture Capital Financings puts this discipline in perspective and lays out the strategies that allow entrepreneurs to excel in their start-up companies. Page by page, this book discusses all facets of the venture capital fundraising process. Along the way, Feld and Mendelson touch on everything from how valuations are set to what externalities venture capitalists face that factor into entrepreneurs' businesses. Includes a breakdown analysis of the mechanics of a Term Sheet and the tactics needed to negotiate Details the different stages of the venture capital process, from starting a venture and seeing it through to the later stages Explores the entire venture capital ecosystem including those who invest in venture capitalist Contain standard documents that are used in these transactions Written by two highly regarded experts in the world of venture capital The venture capital arena is a complex and competitive place, but with this book as your guide, you'll discover what it takes to make your way through it.




Built on Rock


Book Description

***BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022 SHORTLISTED TITLE*** Starting a business is one of the most exciting things you can do. It’s also one of the most daunting. There’s so much that can go right, and so much that can go wrong. That’s why you need to understand and minimise the legal and commercial risks involved. When your new business is built on rock, you can relax in the knowledge that you won’t lose access to life-changing opportunities or waste time and energy on fighting legal challenges. Instead, you’re free to get on with what you do best — coming up with fresh ideas, finding ways to make them a reality, and selling your products or services to an ever-expanding customer base. This book makes the complicated aspects of start-up law simple. In everyday language, it walks you through the key legal and commercial considerations. Setting up your corporate structure for maximum advantage Discovering your risks and how to minimise them Finding out the best sources of investment Learning how to value your company Negotiating with investors for long-term success MICHAEL BUCKWORTH is a qualified solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, and the founder of Buckworths (www.buckworths.com), the only law firm in the UK working exclusively with start-ups and high-growth businesses. He has a passion for entrepreneurialism, and has advised countless start-ups over the last ten years. He’s been ‘entrepreneur in residence’ at London South Bank University and University College, London, for several years, and is a regular speaker at industry events.




Lifecycle of a Technology Company


Book Description

Praise for Lifecycle of a Technology Company "Lifecycle of a Technology Company is a comprehensive business and legal handbook for all but the most experienced technology entrepreneurs. I shared my copy with a few colleagues at MIT who have either started or are contemplating launching their own companies, and I had a real problem retrieving it. The data supports my opinion that this book will attain 'handbook' status on the desks of technology entrepreneurs." -Dr. George B. Kenney, Associate Director Materials Processing & Microphotonics Centers at MIT "This book will help entrepreneurs avoid the pitfalls on the long road to success for venture-backed technology companies. It distills a lifetime of experience in advising technology companies in a concise and understandable way." -Howard Berke, Serial Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist "Lifecycle of a Technology Company provides a valuable resource for lawyers at a variety of experience levels. The junior lawyer will use this resource for the basics. More experienced lawyers with a broad practice will use this for a 'sanity check' relative to market terms and business rationale. In the trenches, it will assist lawyers by providing practical, plain speaking explanations for why things operate as they do in the finance, intellectual property, and merger & acquisition segments of the technology world. If you expect to represent technology clients, keep this book nearby." -James O'Hare, Partner Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, Boston




Angel Investing


Book Description

Angel Investing: Start to Finish is the most comprehensive practical and legal guide written to help investors and entrepreneurs avoid making expensive mistakes. Angel investing can be fun, financially rewarding, and socially impactful. But it can also be a costly endeavor in terms of money, time, and missed opportunities. Through the successes, failures, and collective experience of the authors you’ll learn how to navigate the angel investment process to maximize your chances of success and manage downside risks as an investor or entrepreneur. You’ll learn how: - Lead investors evaluate deals - Lawyers think through term sheets - To keep perspective through losses and triumphs This book will also be of use to founders raising an angel round, who will be wise to learn how decisions are made on the other side of the table. No matter where you’re starting from, this book will give you the context to become a savvier thinker, a better negotiator, and a positive member of the angel investing and startup communities.




Why Startups Fail


Book Description

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.