I’ve been doing deals as a corporate attorney for over 15 years, including nearly eight years in the trenches at two major law firms in New York City; and during that period, I have seen certain mistakes made by entrepreneurs (and inexperienced deal guys) over and over again. The purpose of this post (which is part I of a series) is to discuss the following five basic mistakes made by entrepreneurs in connection with corporate transactions: (1) the failure to diligence the guys on the other side of the table; (2) the failure to build a strong transaction team; (3) the failure to run the negotiations through the lawyers; (4) the failure to check their emotions and to remain disciplined; and (5) blinking first. The video version of this post is set forth immediately below.
There have been several relatively recent blog posts with respect to the issue of founder vesting, including (i) two posts by Chris Dixon, a smart angel investor and co-founder of Hunch, here and here; and (ii) a post by Mark Suster, a successful entrepreneur turned VC (and another smart guy), here. There are also a number of solid older posts addressing this issue, including (i) Venture Hack’s post here and (ii) Brad Feld’s post here. The purpose of this post is three-fold: (i) to weigh-in from the legal side; (ii) to try to pull the foregoing posts together in an organized manner; and (iii) thereby to provide five practical tips to entrepreneurs in connection with founder vesting. (more…)
Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of the Firm. Scott has 16+ years of broad corporate and securities law experience, including nearly eight years at two prominent New York City law firms. Read more »
