VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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Carlos Cruz-Abrams
One of the pieces of advice that I always want to give to founders is that the world isn’t out to get them. Right. and it often feels that way when you’re a founder.
Being a founder is exhausting. And being a founder is expensive sometimes. It costs emotionally, it costs actual money, and it costs physically. You don’t sleep; it’s a real physical expense. Taking an approach where everyone is trying to get something from you is never a great approach.
But there are actually true ecosystems of people who want to help you. And I think that part of success is relying on others for that.
It’s also great to have someone in your corner, and I think that’s a key thing that a lot of startup founders don’t realize: lawyers are people. Lawyers have empathy, and lawyers have seen it. We’ve seen all of these situations, which seem like the end of the world. No one’s ever gone through it. Everyone’s gone through it.
It’s very rare for a client to come in and ask me to invent the wheel. They think they’re asking me to invent the wheel. It’s very rare that the wheel actually has to be invented. But they need someone to walk through it. They need someone to understand it, and they need someone to point them in the right direction.
A large part of the relationship with the lawyer is education. and it’s what I tell my clients. I love to teach.
If I have a client who walks away from our relationship not understanding what I’ve done and not being able to articulate what I’ve done, I haven’t done a good job. Even if I did a good job on legal documents, even if I helped them do a deal.
You wanna make sure that you’re finding someone who’s invested in teaching you as well as helping you grow, the business and yourself. And I think that’s important.
Why do you get a lawyer? It’s because you need a guidepost, and you need someone who’s going to help you navigate the parts of your business you don’t even understand.
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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