Venture Hacks

Scott Edward Walker’s sponsor post, Top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs hate lawyers, created a lot of awesome discussion about startup lawyers. See the comments to that post and the comments to Bram Cohen’s follow-up, “Lawyers can’t tell you you can’t do something”.
Scott’s post also generated a lot of positive comments from lawyers who blog, tweet, [...]

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Yesterday, we published Top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs hate lawyers, a sponsor post by Scott Edward Walker. Scott’s a lawyer.
First, I thought other lawyers would hate it. I was totally wrong — we got a bunch of nice comments from lawyers like well-known Silicon Valley folks Yokum Taku, Josh King, and Matt Bartus.
Second, Bram Cohen, [...]

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Thanks to Walker Corporate Law Group, a boutique law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs, for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Scott Edward Walker, the firm’s founder and CEO. If you like it, check out Scott’s blog and tweets @ScottEdWalker. He’s also writing a new series on VentureBeat: Ask [...]

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Thanks to Walker Corporate Law Group, a boutique law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs, for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Scott Edward Walker, the firm’s founder and CEO. If you like it, check out Scott’s blog and tweets @ScottEdWalker. – Nivi

It’s a new year — which means it’s [...]

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Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. And if you want an intro to Atlas, send me an email. I’ll put you in touch if there’s a fit. Thanks. [...]

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I learned a lot from a recent twitter by Andrew Chen:
“Other people teach you the rules of the game. Venture Hacks teaches you how to play it.”
First, I learned that lawyers are referees, not coaches.
Second, I learned that advisors are the coaches of the startup game.
Lawyers teach you the rules of the game. But they [...]

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Here are the latest great comments from our readers—please keep ‘em coming!
Rob Lord, founder of Songbird (Sequoia Capital), has some ideas for VC Wear t-shirts:
“Mo’ money, mo’ board seats.
“409a a-okay!
“Some of my best friends are EIRs.
“Venture debt is a non-starter.”
Jonathan Boutelle, founder of SlideShare, suggests using SlideShare to share decks privately:
“One safe way to [...]

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Summary: When lawyers defer their legal fees, they expect equity for the risk of not getting paid. If their risk is low or they’re not deferring fees, you can say no. In any case, offer them the right to invest $25K-$50K in your financing instead of giving them free equity.
A reader asks:
“I wonder if I [...]

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“C’mon—you have $500M and I am raising $1.5M and you want me to take the first $25K to pay your legal expenses for doing the deal? That’s like your dad giving you your allowance and then asking you to buy him a hot dog. When we were raising money for Flixster I thought that must [...]

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Sorry we haven’t posted for a few days—we’ll get back to venture hacking this week. In the meantime, here are some hacks from the deep recesses of our personal blogs…
Naval
VC Bundling
Microsoft bundles its Office applications. Record Labels and Game Publishers bundle cash and distribution. Silicon Valley Venture Capital bundles Advice, Control, and Money. In lean [...]

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