{"id":7025897,"date":"2026-08-03T23:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T23:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/angel-investor\/start-up-legals-what-not-to-screw-up\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T23:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T23:50:17","slug":"start-up-legals-what-not-to-screw-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7025897","title":{"rendered":"Start Up Legals: What not to screw up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Legal teams today are under increasing pressure to move faster, reduce risk, and support business growth without slowing deals down. This is especially true when it comes to startup legals, where founders need practical and efficient guidance. Helen Goldberg, Co-Founder and COO of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.legaledge.co.uk\/\">LegalEdge,<\/a> shares her top practical tips for simplifying legal processes and making legal work for the business \u2013 not against it. <\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>She strongly believes legal should enable the business rather than slow it down. An \u2018inside-out\u2019 approach is necessary to help companies identify what truly matters, so they can prioritise risk, streamline documentation, and manage legal strategy, processes, and budgets more proactively.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-1-manage-your-cap-table-and-have-a-mechanism-to-deal-with-leaver-shares\">1) Manage your CAP table and have a mechanism to deal with leaver shares<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Have your Cap table on a simple spreadsheet and put simple Shareholder\/ Founder Agreement and bespoke Articles of Association in place asap. Don\u2019t use anything fancy at this stage! The agreements \/ articles work like a prenup. Hopefully you\u2019ll never need to rely on them. But things happen, founders sometimes can\u2019t stay the distance, and founder fall out is sadly common. So, the docs should set out founder roles, equity splits, decision-making power, a conflict resolution process, and, most importantly, what happens to a leaver\u2019s shares.<\/p>\n<p>Having these docs in place helps resolve any disputes and stops early leavers from keeping a large stake, which is a big turn off for potential investors. If you don\u2019t have them, it can take so much time and money to sort out that it can damage a startup beyond repair. We have seen this happen\u2026.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-2-intellectual-property-ownership-and-protection\">2) Intellectual property ownership and protection<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ensure IP is transferred to the company, trade secrets and confidential information are protected, and trade marks, patents, etc are registered in the company\u2019s name. If this isn\u2019t done early on it can be hard\/ impossible to fix later. And if the company\u2019s value is based on its IP, (brand, proprietary software, etc), but you can\u2019t show it is owned by the company and protected, it\u2019ll put-off investors\/ customers\/ etc. So:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Get simple IP assignments from founders, freelancers, agencies, etc. for any IP created by them (e.g. software, brand) etc. and use simple agreements like One NDA. Register your brand and any unique product names as trade marks in the countries in which you\u2019ll be trading (with the correct spec and in the right classes) to prevent others from using anything similar.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re developing novel products\/ technology, consult a patent specialist early to determine if you can get patent protection. It\u2019s too late once you\u2019ve launched. Almost everything else can be put in place as you scale.<\/p>\n<p><em>If you want to discuss how to get these basics right early on our partner LegalEdge can help on\u00a0info@legaledge.co.uk. They also offer a Cap Table and Corporate Document Review as well as a free Trade Mark Audit so if you\u2019re not sure if your brand is protected or think your current documents aren\u2019t fit for purpose we can help.<\/em> <em>LegalEdge provides dedicated experienced fractional in-house legal counsel. They integrate into your team to set up and run the legal function, acting as a single point of contact. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legal teams today are under increasing pressure to move faster, reduce risk, and support business growth without slowing deals down. This is especially true when it comes to startup legals, where founders need practical and efficient guidance. Helen Goldberg, Co-Founder and COO of LegalEdge, shares her top practical tips for simplifying legal processes and making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7025898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12034],"tags":[189598,2846,5454],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7025897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angel-investor","tag-legals","tag-screw","tag-start"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Start Up Legals: What not to screw up - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7025897\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Start Up Legals: What not to screw up - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Legal teams today are under increasing pressure to move faster, reduce risk, and support business growth without slowing deals down. This is especially true when it comes to startup legals, where founders need practical and efficient guidance. 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