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Bill Schreiber: Law 101 For Startups


Bill Schreiber is a partner in Fenwick & West’s corporate group. His emphasis is on  Start-up Counseling, Venture Capital Financing, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Joint Ventures. Fenwick incorporated Apple, when it was just a startup, and their current client list includes young companies like Twitter and Facebook, as well as bigger companies like Cisco and Symantec.

Bill shared his thoughts and insight on:How to keep from losing your intellectual property. How to structure your pre-VC funding. And how to pick the right legal entity for your business. The complete interview :  Law 101 For Startups – with Bill Schreiber of Fenwick & West interview @ Mixergy.

Excepts

Section 1 – Get It documented

  • Make sure the company owns the Intellectual property (anyone who provides services in any capacity should sign agreements)
  • Be clear with employees and vendors on relationship.
  • Capitalization: Venture Capitalists want 30-60%, want the owners to own the majority, and want to know who else is involved
  • Consider vesting stock. If you decide to vest stock, there’s an important form to file with the IRS.

    • Section 2 – Business Entities and Taxation

  • Bill Schreiber recommends S-Corp over LLC. S-Corp advantage is ease of granting stock options. The catch: no foreign investors, single stock type (no preferred stock).
  • Transforming S-Corp and LLC to C-Corp is a tax-free transaction. UNLESS you have negative net assets (more liabilities than you have assets). This is “the only risk”.
  • Advice: Create the business opportunity offshore (parent or subsidiary). All sales generated outside the US, the US will not tax.

    • Section 3 – Stock

  • Convertible notes are the way to go.
  • Touches on typical terms for stock equity rounds. Valuation, liquidation preference, how board is set up, rights of preferred stockholders, etc.
  • Liquidation preference = how much benefit preferred stock gets at the expense of the normal stock.
  • Participating vs. non-participating preferred stock.

    • Founder at Alltopstartups and author of Working in The Gig Economy. His work has been featured at Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine.

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