We focus on understanding your organisation – your goals and your needs. We will help you respond to the specific circumstances and provide practical timely and commercial legal solutions.
When you are getting started in business, you want to focus on what excites you. Thankfully, what excites us is helping you and your business to succeed!
Of course, there are some legal requirements for a startup. We know that many new business owners are so busy that they don’t have time to implement them. We’ve packaged up what you need to know and we’ll partner with you to understand what is required.
A startup can be difficult to define. It’s more than a new small business, and is usually connected to innovation. Common features of a startup are that they:
- are designed to grow quickly
- often seek funding from the outset, via capital from investors rather than a loan from the bank
- begin with an exit strategy in mind.
Because startups grow quickly, it’s important that they have their legal ducks in a row from the outset. Your business structure and protections need to keep up with your growth. The types of legal advice startups need include:
- structure advice, including setting up a company, dual company structures and the use of trusts to hold shares
- raising capital, including making sure the company set-up allows outside investment, loan agreements for family investment, subscription agreements, and terms sheets for investors
- issues around employing staff and engaging contracts
- dealing with customers and suppliers
- protecting your intellectual property.
We understand that startups may not have the capital to spend a lot on legal services when they are first starting out, so we have designed packages to provide some standard documentation and ongoing advice to assist you without breaking the bank. This includes offering standard documents for you to use, which can then be customised for an additional fee. Our startup document suite includes:
- shareholder agreement
- investment term sheet and share subscription agreement
- employment agreement
- contractor agreement
- website terms and conditions and privacy policy
- confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement
- IP assignment agreement
- services or client agreement.
The streamlined startup package is priced at $3,000* and includes:
- the opportunity for you to choose two documents from our suite of standard startup documents to suit your needs
- group coaching sessions: a series of three one-hour coaching sessions focused on protecting IP, dealing with customers and suppliers and engaging employees/contractors
- annual consultancy membership: 10 x one-on-one sessions per year with one of our business lawyers.
*Exclusive of GST and current as at 1 July 2018
