Knowledge Sharing

Attorney Compensation from Startups by Martin Nichols and Stan Christensen

The industry norm is for attorneys not to take equity or a board seat as forms of compensation from startups, says attorney Martin Nichols. In Silicon Valley, fee deferrals are far more normal. Big legal firms may be less likely to work with small startups due to time and revenue constraints, but a smaller firm may not be able to provide a startup with everything that is needed when it comes time for big transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions.
Martin Nichols

Martin Nichols

Martin Nichols, a partner in the Corporate and Finance group, focuses his corporate practice on emerging growth and established technology companies in the clean tech, software, telecommunications and medical device industries.He works at DLA Piper.

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Stan Christensen

Stan Christensen

"Stan Christensen is a partner at Arbor Advisors, an investment banking firm where he negotiates on behalf of mid-market technology companies. He has nearly twenty years of experience in both transactional and operations roles and has worked on hundreds of transactions. Before starting Arbor, he was the General Manager of Eazel, a Linux-based software startup. He started his career in corporate finance on Wall Street, and then worked for ten years with CMG, a negotiation advisory firm affiliated with The Harvard Negotiation Project. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Brigham Young University."

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Entrepreneurship.org

Created by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Entrepreneurship.org was formed as a free, online international resource designed to help build entrepreneurial economies. Entrepreneurship.org features a vast array of content and resources to assist entrepreneurs, business mentors, policy makers, academics and investors through each phase of the entrepreneurial process. The content ranges from resources entrepreneurs need to launch a company to policies and research that has been conducted regarding entrepreneurship.

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