On selecting a corporate lawyer

I feel very good about all aspects of our progress and state of the business, as it were, except for one thing.  Our corporate legal representation.  Lawyers are a bit like doctors.  They have different specialties and what is common knowledge for one specialty might be totally foreign for another.

The first type of lawyer you will need is a corporate attorney.  They will help you set up the company and get things like NDA's and employment agreements together.  It is important to get this stuff right.   I had figured that this early stage stuff is commodity kind of work and does not need some high powered, big priced attorney.  I figured that this is an area where we could just select a competent local lawyer who has some tech experience and move on with our lives.  I was wrong.

Upon further review, my advice for a technology start-up is to go with an experienced corporate lawyer who specializes in technology.  There are terms that any experienced investor is going to expect to see in the founding documents.  A lawyer who does not have the relevant experience will not include them in the documents and that could be detrimental later.   

A some of red flags that we saw, but did not realize until later.

1. If they have never heard of a SAFE.
2. If there is no kind of vesting schedule or termination provisions for the founders in the shareholder agreement.
3. If they have you create the company in any state but DE (or maybe CA or NY, if your are based in either of those states.) 

We are changing out our corporate representation.  Both of the firms we are looking at are not cheap.  But some things are worth paying retail.

Marc's Blog

One of my friends recommended Marc Andreesen's blog. Marc was one of the founders of Netscape and Loudcloud and seems to have a very good touch on picking ideas for (and executing on) start ups. I have been reading his practical advice on founding starts ups. They are a good read and I recommend them. The first post talks about why not to do a start up. I thought it was instructive, but that some of his reasons why start ups are difficult are applicable even in fairly well established companies. Hiring is always a pain, though in different ways than he describes.

He also mentions the long hours. For anyone who wants to great something great, the hours always are long. If really you care about what you are doing, then you are going to put discretionary time in to the work.

His comment about it being easy for the culture to go sideways I would not argue, but as a company gets bigger, the culture is going to take a turn for the worse. I have worked at two large companies that had grown rapidly and both of them had "old-timers" who spoke loudly about the degradation of the corporate culture over time. Creating a good culture is a constant battle and as a company gets larger, it gets fought (day to day) not from the top, but in the middle. Having said that, a bad CEO can ruin the culture faster than you can drive a termites minbike around a pea. I guess what I am saying is that a good corporate culture can go south at any time. Creating stuff is hard. Even in big companies.