Emerging Companies

Our attorneys represent emerging companies throughout the course of their lifecycle. This includes initial formation; financings, capital raises and follow-on investments; mergers, joint ventures, restructurings and other growth opportunities; and acquisitions by strategic or financial buyers.

For more than 30 years, lawyers on this team have served as counselors, mentors and quarterbacks to startups throughout the country.  These attorneys understand that emerging companies require high-quality legal counsel to ensure their business is positioned for success.  Indeed, our attorneys often serve as outside “general counsel” to our emerging company clients, acting as a de facto senior member of the management team and attending board meetings. 

Our emerging companies practice taps into the talent and experience of the firm’s intellectual property, labor, employment & immigration, tax, employee benefits, executive compensation and other practices to ensure that our startup clients, their founders and employees have a partner in Williams Mullen for all facets of their business.  Our team-oriented service approach enables our clients to call on lawyers who are familiar with their technology, products, services and business models and who understand the strategic decisions made by senior management.

In addition to representing entrepreneurs and emerging companies, we also have significant experience providing counsel to venture capital funds and venture capital-backed emerging companies in connection with their fundraising, governance and investment activities.  We know what’s important to investors and companies because we live on both sides of that table.

Representative legal services for startups include:

• Entity formation, including choice of entity, ownership agreements and capitalization structures.
• Financing, including initial capital raises such as pre-seed, seed, Series A and follow on investments.
• Introductions to sources of capital and developing strategies to obtain funding.
• Negotiation of key contracts with vendors, suppliers, lenders and employees.
• Intellectual property, including copyright, patent and trademark licensing, IP development agreements, infringement issues and complex IP transactions.
• Preparation and implementation of equity incentive plans and key agreements with management, employees, consultants and advisors.
• Joint venture agreements, including formation, capitalization, governance, operation and sale.
• Federal and state securities law compliance.
• Exit strategy, including acquisition by strategic or financial buyers, or restructuring.

We pride ourselves on our client-appreciated long-standing history of offering experienced advice to emerging companies confronting important, even bet the company, decisions by relating what we’ve seen work and, often more importantly, not work in similar situations in the past. As a startup law firm, we enable clients to focus on growing their businesses and leaving to us the legal work to implement that growth.  We’re there for our clients through the good and the occasional bad they encounter on their business journeys.  Ask them.