October 2010
Beginner
352 pages
6h 11m
English
Content preview from Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 70. Your Brother-in-Law Is Probably Not the Right Corporate Lawyer
Brad Feld
Brad is a managing director at Foundry Group and one of the co-founders of TechStars.
Entrepreneurs hate to spend money on lawyers, especially early on. I'm a good example of this—for my first company (Feld Technologies) we spent $99 to incorporate our company in Delaware, wrote our own one-page contracts, and didn't hire a lawyer until we were negotiating the sale of our company seven years later. At that point, we paid plenty because we had very little of the formal records required by the company that acquired our company. We were lucky, though, because our business was very simple, had no investors or shareholders other than the three original partners, and didn't have any litigation over the course of our business.
When I did my first angel investment (in NetGenesis) after selling my company, I got an education in how lawyers work with startup companies. I resisted it at first, but then realized that I was investing $25,000 of my hard-earned money into NetGenesis and wanted to make sure my ownership stake was properly documented. Fortunately, the company found great startup counsel ( Joe Hadzima—a well-known early stage lawyer in Boston at the time). We documented everything correctly and inexpensively including vesting arrangements for the six founders which quickly turned into four with only a ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.