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During the phase of a startup life cycle the founders are still considering the business idea you should consider the following legal concerns:
Intellectual property - will there be potential object for trademarks, patents, design rights, database rights, copyrights? Make sure you have all the founders transfer their intellectual property rights to the startup company - including domains, logo designs, pitch decks, design files, github code repository content, etc.
Corporate structure - think about whether you would like all the founders be in the management board and signing for the company or just one or two founders? think whether there should be a process for making decisions about funding and options and whom to hire.
Funding - If funding is needed, what kind of funding would be the most suitable? Loans? Equity funding? Are you ready to give up shares of your company? To whom and why? How much? From day one, try to envision the cap table (percentages of shareholding) five years from now.
Resources you could use:
Intellectual property - will there be potential object for trademarks, patents, design rights, database rights, copyrights? Make sure you have all the founders transfer their intellectual property rights to the startup company - including domains, logo designs, pitch decks, design files, github code repository content, etc.
Corporate structure - think about whether you would like all the founders be in the management board and signing for the company or just one or two founders? think whether there should be a process for making decisions about funding and options and whom to hire.
Funding - If funding is needed, what kind of funding would be the most suitable? Loans? Equity funding? Are you ready to give up shares of your company? To whom and why? How much? From day one, try to envision the cap table (percentages of shareholding) five years from now.
Resources you could use:
- Free advice from Tech Startup Legal Clinic given by IT Law master programme students at the University of Tartu
- Model Documents on Startup Estonia website
- NJORD Lab package - 10 h of free of charge business model analysis