startup company

How to Protect Your Silicon Valley Start-Up from Lawsuits

February 1, 2019 | Structure Law Group, LLP

Avoiding the Most Common Business Lawsuits

Defending against any lawsuit has the potential to sink a Silicon Valley start-up. You must defend against even frivolous litigation especially so in today’s fast-paced and ever-expanding startup industry. There is no way to bulletproof a business from all litigation, but there are ways to greatly reduce the likelihood of lawsuits and their financial impact on your business. The experienced business litigation attorneys at Structure Law Group, LLP can help advise and protect start-ups against business litigation before it happens. While you can’t protect against all litigation, you can protect against the most common legal complaints against businesses. Business attorneys commonly defend against the following lawsuits:

Breach of Contract Claims – Sometimes start-ups enter into contracts that aren’t favorable, or they run out of funding to fulfill their obligations. The business lawyers at Structure Law Group can review and draft the terms of any proposed contracts and include certain protective indemnification and liquidated damage clauses to reduce the cost of or prevent litigation.

Due Diligence in Acquisitions

April 6, 2018 | Mark Figueiredo

There are many reasons why thorough due diligence is indispensable to a successful corporate acquisition. Perhaps most importantly, it is a critical step in ensuring that they buyer has a comprehensive picture of what is being acquired. Both legal and financial interests are placed at risk in any business transaction. If thorough due diligence is not performed, a corporation can incur legal liability to its shareholders for losses sustained in the negligent acquisition. It can also lose significant assets, or waste valuable time and money on litigating the failed transaction. An experienced mergers and acquisitions attorney can protect your business by ensuring that all aspects of your due diligence investigation are conducted accurately, thoroughly, and with a broad-reaching projection for all potential contingencies. While it is not a legal requirement for the due diligence process, hiring an experienced Mountain View mergers and acquisitions attorney it is the best way to ensure that your investigations are thoroughly completed and can also protect a corporation from shareholder claims that its due diligence was incomplete or inadequate.

Due Diligence: The Basics

In general, due diligence is the process by which a buyer or seller performs a comprehensive appraisal of a business asset before executing a sales transaction. On the buyer’s end, this thorough investigation will examine the assets and liabilities of the assets to be purchased, as well as forming a picture of their commercial potential. For the seller, a due diligence investigation will focus on the buyer itself. It is vital for the seller to know whether the buyer has the financial means to consummate the deal. If the transaction will give the buyer any rights to management or control of the seller’s business, it is also important for the seller to learn about those processes, and how the seller’s business operations might be affected by the buyer’s exercise of those rights.

What are the Similarities and Differences between LLC and Corporate Formalities?

June 23, 2017 | Gokalp Gurer

Many considerations go into deciding which legal entity to choose when starting a business. In some cases, as the business grows, it may even want to convert into a different entity type. For example, if it began as an LLC and the owner now plans on seeking angel investment, he/she may consider converting to a corporation. In these situations (formations or conversions), one critical factor to consider is meeting the formalities required for different legal entities.

When a California business is considering converting its entity type, it should not do so without consulting with an experienced California corporate attorney. In addition to filing conversion documents, there are many internal factors that should be considered and discussed before transitioning (the company’s management structure and capitalization structure, as well as any special voting considerations, are only a few examples).

Now, we will look at some of the similarities and the differences in formalities required for limited liability companies (LLCs) and corporations.

Venture Capital Financing – Is it Right for my Startup Business?

May 12, 2017 | Structure Law Group, LLP

Venture capital financing can be an extremely important asset to startups that do not have access to other types of traditional business financing, such as bank loans or the public markets. There can be many benefits to venture capital financing for entrepreneurs, including the following:

Venture capital involves equity capital, so it does not leave a startup with substantial debt from the start;
Venture capitalists often take greater risks on young and unestablished companies because they see the potential for extensive growth and, therefore, higher returns;