Having worked for nearly eight years at two major NYC law firms, I can attest to the fact that the big-firm template doesn’t work for entrepreneurs. Sadly, I’ve seen many situations where entrepreneurs have been screwed and/or simply did not understand the documents they signed.(3) Finally, I like beating-up the lawyers, too. The firm was trying to convince themthat the deal needed to be done under English law and, accordingly, thefounders had to wire them $15,000 to retain a British law firm to representthem. For example, two of my clients were recently sent term sheets from a VC firm in England which turned-out to be a complete scam. Indeed, there are a lot of bad apples out there, and entrepreneurs need a good lawyer to watch their back. Accordingly,simply having standardized documents with no negotiation doesn’t make a lot ofsense to me (even at the seed level).(2) Unfortunately, most investors are not Fred Wilson. A few quick points: (1) I’ve been doing deals as a corporate lawyer for 17+ years, and one thing that I have learned is that every deal is different: different parties, different negotiating leverage, different risks. We are documenting financings for cutting edge web startups using technology from the middle ages. I promise I will blog about it when you do.Īnd in the meantime, if anyone knows of any good mobile signing apps on Android, let me know about them in the comments.
#SIGNMYPAD ANDROID ANDROID#
Please EasySign team get me an Android version.
After going through torture this weekend at our beach house to sign docs that absolutely had to be signed by yesterday, I'm searching for something similar on my Android. I am going to find out if we can use Docracy on our next venture financing to make things more efficient.Īnd Bijan posted recently that he is using an iPhone app called EasySign to sign legal documents when he is out and about. One of the best hacks of the Disrupt Hackathon last weekend was Docracy. We wonder why the law firms we work with have not.
We've noticed that some of the new online funding platforms, like Profounder, have managed to totally automate this process online. Tops on that list is document creation, distribution, change management, and ultimately signing. I'm hopeful that Brad and Jason's upcoming book will help reduce the time and money spent educating entrpreneurs on venture financings, but realisitcally the company counsel is still going to have to do some hand holding.īut there are many areas where the company counsel is spending time and money doing things that can and should be automated. That time and money is valuable to everyone involved. The entrepreneur still needs an experienced counsel to explain the deal to them. I don't know why raising a venture round can't be like signing a lease on an apartment with standardized docs and a one page rider for any changes.Īs we dig into the costs on the company counsel side, there are areas we feel can be improved and areas that cannot. I'd like to see venture financing legal fees get to $5k or less. But we are still seeing company counsel costs of $15k or more on venture financings even with our "no negotiation" approach. And we've been pushing company counsel to reduce their costs. That takes out the investor counsel costs. On many of our recent transactions, we've gone without counsel and have signed documents without negotiation. I've been on a mission to dramatically reduce the legal costs of a venture financing.
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