What Your Attorney Wish You Knew Prior to Raising Your First Equity Round

As an entrepreneur, you have formed your entity, built your MVP and maybe even started gaining traction with customers. You are ready to bring in that first round of equity financing to help scale your business, but you are just learning about many of these terms for the first time and you want to avoid any missteps that could hurt your prospects down the road.

In this session at Raleigh-Durham Startup Week, Robinson Bradshaw attorneys Adam Berkland and Adam Martin walked through key terms of a typical early-stage preferred stock/priced equity round of financing. Attendees heard a lawyer's perspective on core term sheet concepts like valuation, exit strategies, down-side protections and control rights for investors, and more. They also discussed common legal due diligence "red flags" to avoid or clean up prior to engaging with investors.