Overview

Start-ups & Emerging Companies

Early-stage companies throughout Massachusetts, the region and beyond seek our team’s help at every stage of corporate development and across a wide range of industries, both tech and non-tech. The members of our Start-ups & Emerging Companies industry group advise and represent clients from concept, business planning, organization and financing through to cultivating a team, and protecting intellectual property.

Clients turn to us to help resolve difficult disputes and litigation, handle sophisticated transactions and advise on complex regulatory issues, including:

Angel and venture capital financings and fund formation, management and raising capital
Biotech deals
Licensing agreements and other complex business contracts
Mergers and acquisitions, combinations, structured financing and tax credits
Restructuring
Real estate investments, permitting and construction
Energy, environmental and land use requirements and regulatory compliance
Strategic collaborations, public finance, project finance and government incentives

Our clients comprise private businesses of all sizes as well as public companies, Fortune 100 corporations, financial institutions, institutes of higher education, energy utilities, nonprofit and quasi-public entities and healthcare providers focusing on the cutting-edge innovations that help grow our economy. Our team’s members collaborate with clients to create and provide comprehensive and cost-effective solutions for early-stage enterprises, investment funds and business management.

As corporate counsel, we help our start-up clients navigate the opportunities and challenges of formation, financing, market entry and regulatory requirements. We also introduce them to our network of VCs, angel investors, bankers, financiers, investors, industrialists and other service providers.

Start-ups and early-growth entities know us as their peers. We are active members of The Venture Forum, the Worcester CleanTech Incubator, and other preeminent organizations supporting thought leadership and incubation for emerging companies.

Experience

Changes in formation and strategic partnering for a tech company

The founders of a mobile application had initially set up a German entity to hold the intellectual property for an invention that recognizes consumer products on a television screen or other visual medium and directs the consumer to websites where the products can be purchased. We helped the company set up a Delaware corporation to become the parent entity and negotiated strategic partnering arrangements with German and Swiss media companies. With our help, the company is currently raising $6 million in a Series A financing.

Growing a new business

A newly-established business needed assistance preparing a distribution and sales agreement for its products. We drafted and negotiated the agreement and has, since then, efficiently put together additional agreements for the sale of goods into new territories.

Other experience

Counsel to a Santa Monica-based clean tech venture fund through several rounds of financing and investment transactions
General counsel to a New York-based venture fund dedicated to helping early-stage startups enterprises and entrepreneurs
Prepared investment agreements for early-stage sustainable building software company
Shared economy company with developing terms, conditions, privacy compliance for its application-based sharing platform
For-profit client with on-line fundraising (crowdfunding) under Title III of the federal JOBS Act

People