VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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Carlos Cruz-Abrams
When I work with a client, the very first question I always ask is, okay, so I need to hear your six-month, one year, 18-month, two years, and five-year plans for the company. And people are sort of taken aback. And the ones that I work with are the ones who are like, okay, here we go. Here’s what my thought is:
Because I truly believe the cliche of, the failure to plan , is planning to fail.
And I think that if you don’t know what that is at every stage, it changes, right? Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean you, you must execute exactly on that plan. Things are gonna change. Roads have curves. But if you never have any idea where you’re trying to get to, you’re never gonna have any idea which fork to take in the road.
That’s where advisors come in. That’s where lawyers come in. That’s where mentors come in and that’s where the, the people in the ecosystem who can help you try to figure out, what is that plan? Cause I definitely don’t want a plan to fail.
If people start thinking of their lawyers as a resource in that way, they’re gonna just end up with a much better relationship too, because what happens is they open up their needs. They open up their strategy, they open up all of the wants of the business and themselves to their lawyer, who’s then able to start thinking about the business holistically.
One of the chief complaints that I see from a lot of startups is “my lawyer doesn’t understand my business. They just tell me to do stuff.” So, what are you looking for? You’re looking for a lawyer who’s thinking about your business, who’s thinking about your needs, and he’s thinking about how to strategize with you to make the law work for your business.
If there’s a box, sometimes you gotta make the box into an octagon because you gotta figure out all the ways you can push it so that this business can stretch the way that it needs to while still protecting the asset, protecting the people and protecting the future of the company.
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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