A startup story, and a few lessons learned.
Five years ago this month, I had just started my third year of law school after clerking at a big law firm in New York. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to practice law and was much more interested in finding an operational role. Everyone always said you could do anything with a law degree. Well, I suppose that might be true, but the traditional channels of finding an entry level position (on campus recruiting, job fairs, etc.) are not accessible to many law students. I determined the most likely way to get such a job was networking and I began experimenting with online social networking. I found that nothing really existed specifically for law students. That’s when I started JDspace.
While JDspace was certainly not a financial home run, it was an educational grand slam. I learned a lot about myself and made a lot of contacts in the Austin startup community, which I leveraged to get a job with the talented team at Andrews Kurth. It was a happy compromise: I would be practicing law but working with awesome startups.
Over the last four years, I have gained nearly 8,000 hours of experience in corporate and securities law with a focus on venture capital and M&A. Having been a part of many wins, a few losses and even a couple draws, I had enough data points to take on an operational role. I suppose it is ironic that I will be using those data points to sell data.
This Monday I embark on a new mission to democratize the world’s access to structured data as VP - Business Development and General Counsel of one of my clients, Infochimps, where I will continue to build on my business and legal background. Before I go, here are a few take aways from being a startup lawyer:
- have a very good reason if you are incorporating as anything other than a Delaware C-Corp
- have a very good reason if you are splitting founder stock unevenly
- have a very good reason if you are not having cliff vesting on the founder stock
- have a very good reason if you are selling common stock (as opposed to preferred) to investors
- issue convertible debt if you don’t want to set a valuation
- make sure every employee signs a PIIA and every consultant signs a consulting agreement
To sum it up:
- have a very good reason if you are deviating from the KISS principle
