Legal Intel for Entrepreneurs
Who Play to Win.
20 years of litigation. Real cases. Real mistakes. Real lessons. Every article is built to help you spot the legal risks most entrepreneurs never see coming β until it's too late.
You're exposed and you don't even know it.
Defense wins championships.
People ask me some version of the same question all the time: if you spent 20 years in the courtroom and handled over a billion dollars in deals and litigation, why are your contracts $197 instead of ...
What is a vesting cliff and do I actually need one? Two co-founders asked me this after a painful lesson: they'd split the company 50/50 on day one, and one of them walked three months later β keeping...
Founders think valuation is about revenue and growth. After 20 years litigating β including a lot of time on the deal side β I can tell you it's also about something far less glamorous: whether your l...
I can't afford a lawyer β can I still protect my business? A solo founder asked me this, half-embarrassed, like it was a dumb question. It's not. It's the most important question most entrepreneurs ne...
The most expensive branding mistake I've seen founders make isn't a bad logo β it's falling in love with a name nobody checked. After 20 years litigating, I've watched businesses spend years and real ...
What does an indemnification clause actually obligate me to? A founder asked me this after signing a vendor agreement without reading the fine print β then getting a letter demanding he cover the vend...
After 20 years in the courtroom, I stopped seeing businesses fail in a hundred different ways and started seeing them fail in seven. Every case I handled, every business I watched come apart, mapped b...
Should I put a non-disparagement clause in my contracts? A founder asked me this after a client relationship ended badly and the client started posting about him β not lies, exactly, but a steady drip...
Urgency sells β that's not the problem. The problem is faking it. After 20 years litigating, I've watched businesses talk themselves into "harmless" countdown timers and "only a few left" banners that...
Who owns the content my AI tools create? A founder asked me this after building his entire brand β logo, ad copy, a library of blog posts β with AI tools, then discovering a competitor had started usi...
Most legal advice starts with a comforting question: how do you build a strong business? I start with the opposite one, because I spent 20 years on the other side of it. How would I destroy yours? How...
When does raising money turn into selling a security? A founder asked me this after he'd already taken $50,000 from three friends in exchange for "a little piece of the upside." No lawyer, no paperwor...