Emerging Enterprise Center Blog - Commentary and Analysis For Entrepreneurs and Startups

I finally saw Social Network. Don't know why I avoided it for so long, but I did. Holding aside the bashing of Mark Zuckerberg (and the tech community in general -  including its attitude towards women), which I don't want to comment on (I am sure others have done a better job than I could), it seems to me that the plot was really driven by poor or, more exactly, nonexistent legal work. It turns out that this movie is a great case study of some of the things we are always counseling entrepreneurs on. I want to be... More

I wrote a second guest blog this one is about repurchase agreements and how to prepare for a parting of the ways for Sim Simeonov on the subject of founder agreements. This one is more . The prior one was on the subject of vesting. I have decided to repost it below. Sim's introduction: Following my [Sim's] posts on improving the performance of founding teams, founder agreements and strategies for dealing with poorly performing co-founders, I continue to receive many emails at FastIgnite from entrepreneurs having difficulties with managing and formalizing the relationships with their co-founders. I reached out to my blogger friend... More

Sim Simeonov has a great post on founder agreements, which I have noted before. One of the classic issues (terminating an agreement with a "co-founder") came up for one of my clients last week. I was surprised that it was the first time for this particular client because it seems to me to be almost an obligation on the part of start up clients that they make clear promises to pay (money and equity) to people they heartily believe will perform some much needed function, write some much needed code, obtain much needed financing – whatever, and those people don’t... More