Venture Capital & Emerging Companies

Practice Overview

Our Venture Capital practice provides a full range of legal services to investors. We routinely represent venture capital funds, private equity funds and angel investors. We have represented two Maine-based venture funds for the past fifteen years so we know the documents, the issues and also understand the importance of delivering our services efficiently, particularly in connection with early stage financings. The firm also has extensive experience in the formation of investment funds.

We represent businesses at every stage of their life cycle, from formation to growth to sale. We are mindful of the hurdles facing many start-ups and early stage companies and understand the importance of putting in place structures and agreements at formation that will serve the long-term interests of our clients. We routinely advise our clients on choice of entity, shareholders’ and owners’ agreements, the protection of intellectual property, licensing, financings (debt and equity), non-disclosure and other restrictive covenant agreements, and employment matters. Our experience is that it is critically important to the future of a business to “get it right” early on, as a failure to do so can have disastrous consequences for a business. We take the long view from the very beginning of our engagement. Of course “getting it right” can be an expensive proposition and the firm often works with start-ups and early stage companies on flexible payment arrangements designed to be fair to the client and the firm.