As startup lawyers, we often receive inquiries from passionate entrepreneurs and founders seeking guidance on when they should consider taking their side projects to the next step by forming a legal entity. Forming a company is a “crossing the Rubicon” moment for any startup. It’s an essential step […]
Given this week’s headlines, many emerging companies may be asking themselves: “Why am I holding so much cash?” The Investment Company Act of 1940 (the 1940 Act) may be to blame. “But I don’t have any intention of being an investment company. Aren’t those mutual funds or […]
What is founders’ preferred stock? Founders’ preferred stock (also called series FF preferred stock) addresses certain tax and accounting issues that can arise when founders decide to get early liquidity by selling shares of their stock to investors at the same price as other preferred stock sold […]
Happy International Women’s Day! Today is a day to recognize the achievement of women in our lives, acknowledge that gender bias still exists, and take action to forge women’s equality. This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #BreakTheBias, so we reached out to a few of our […]
So you’ve been hammering away, putting your life savings into your new startup (plus maxing out your credit cards) and now you have investors willing to put money into your company. How should the money you contribute before investors be treated? And how do you to get […]
One of the most common conversations I have with the founders of businesses involves how they determined a way to split the ownership amongst themselves. It is probably the first difficult decision new partners face together in starting a company. In many instances, the new founders decide that they are going to split ownership equally.
The vast majority of technology startups are capitalized in the same manner: common stock to the founders, common stock reserved in an option pool for employees and consultants, and preferred stock (Series A, Series B, etc.) sold to investors. However, a small but probably growing percentage of startups consider a more complicated stock structure that includes, in addition to the types of equity above, a special class of common stock reserved for founders.
If there are two or more founders in a startup, an important consideration regarding the initial issuance of equity to the team is vesting of the founders’ equity.
