The Law for Founders

INTRO

This book is for founders, not lawyers.

If you are a founder, or an aspiring founder, this book is to help you wade through the trenches with practical legal tips and information for building and protecting your business.

Consider this book as a legal guide to implementing your business idea and understanding the legal framework around your business. Using case examples and examples from my own practice the book covers core legal issues every startup should consider.

*****

Entrepreneurship is alive and well in Canada.  More and more Canadians are capitalizing on their dreams of operating their own businesses. The success of organizations like Victoria Lennox’s Start-up  Canada are a testament to the growing popularity of becoming an entrepreneur.

Somewhere along the line, entrepreneurship not only became an option in university programs, but it actually became “cool”. As college students started making money online and building business empires like Facebook and Google, fewer hockey players were born in Canada. Now more than ever, teenagers and young adults are aspiring to become founders.

In the early 2000’s, as tech entrepreneurship grew, so did the support systems for founders. From educational institutions building a host of incubator and accelerator programs to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter giving a funding boost to new ventures and products.

However, one support network that lags is the legal services industry. Startups are lean and lawyers are expensive. This leads to a legal knowledge gap for founders and often a failure to fully consider how the law impacts a founder’s business.

Many founders fray from meeting with a lawyer until they view it as absolutely necessary or there is some existential crisis.  I see it frequently, where founders wish they met with a lawyer sooner to understand the implications of decisions they made, agreements they signed or risks they took. Decisions which, unwittingly, can materially impact the success of a business.

Starting in 2011, I practiced corporate litigation. I came to realize that many businesses fail or face setbacks as a result of not having completed important legal processes early on.  From not entering contracts with third parties and founder disputes tearing a business apart, to government regulators seizing assets and shutting businesses down. In some cases, it was hard to watch.

With an interest in tech, I decided I would pursue a career helping founders build businesses, rather than tear them down. So, in 2013 I started my own corporate law firm and for the last 11 years I’ve enjoyed working with founders. Their personalities are positive and optimistic, unlike many lawyers (especially litigation lawyers).

Yet, founders often face a blind spot for the law. I realized that part of the lawyer’s role becomes not just giving advice and drafting contracts, but educating clients on the legal issues and legal framework around the decisions they make. As I found myself educating clients on common topics, I decided to sit one night and map out a table of contents with all the things a founder will wish they knew about the law when they started.

And so, my motivation in writing this book became filling the legal knowledge gap for Canadian founders. To enable founders to make more calculated decisions about their business and operate from a position of confidence and strength. With the knowledgebase from this book, you will make more informed decisions about protecting your business and stick-handling legal challenges you will undoubtably face.

There are known risks and unknown risks that lurk in the future for every founder. This book intends to shift some of the unknown risks, the ones you might not have even contemplated, and make them known risks for you to navigate on the way to success.

Enjoy.