VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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Carlos Cruz-Abrams
One of the things that we often see is that founders don’t even know what they don’t know.
When we work with startups, they’re really good at something very specific. Whether they’re FinTech, whether they’re food tech, whether they’re something brick-and-mortar, or whether they’re hardware, they’re amazing at that. And lawyers aren’t trying to get into their business to tell them how to run it. What they’re trying to do is help them realize the places where they lack knowledge.
And whether that’s, I’m hiring a team, and I need to make sure that my team A) has the proper incentives and B) is doing stuff that really is forwarding everyone on the team and forwarding the company; we’re all rowing in the same direction. The way you row in the same direction is you protect your intellectual property, is you’re approaching your clients or your customers in a way that is going to be helping you and helping the company.
A lot of founders don’t think about things like securities laws. “Oh, I just issued out a bunch of securities.” You could run into real problems that are not only gonna create problems for the company, but they could even create problems for the people you’re granting securities to. What is securities equity, debt options.
And if you’re not doing that properly, you’re then also gonna run into problems with future investors who are gonna say you didn’t do it properly, becuase investors know, and then you’re not gonna be able to raise money.
There’s a lot of things that founders don’t even know that they don’t. And that’s where trying to get the right mentors in place, trying to get the right legal team in place and then trying to get all the other advisors that you need is really helpful. And lawyers are good at helping founders do that.
About Cruz-Abrams Seigel
Cruz-Abrams Seigel LLC (CAS) is a corporate legal boutique focused on bringing practical, operationally oriented and strategic legal representation to every transaction. CAS’s team of big law firm trained lawyers, who also have first-hand business, financial and operational experience, represents startups, venture capital funds, private equity funds, angel investors and both strategic and financial acquirers on transactions ranging from $200K to $200M. As entrepreneurs themselves, the CAS team understands the investment of time, effort and energy it takes to succeed, and CAS is invested in each client’s success, providing personalized attention and building relationships that mean more and help clients go farther.
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