Practice Area

Emerging Companies and Venture Capital

Our ECVC practice spans incorporations, company governance, cap table magement and financing rounds, from SAFEs to Series A to Series F, and everything in between.

§ 01 — Overview

Legal should never block a deal

Slow turns on financing docs can kill a deal. Poor corporate governance can create ambiguity where there should be clarity in your business.

Our team has experience overseeing headline grabbing financings  and incorporating, and overseeing, numerous companies.

§ 02 — What We Handle

What we handle for you

Incorporations

Set up your company so that you can begin operating, open a bank account and take a VC check.

Corporate Governance

Guidance on your Bylaws, Charter, board structure, and other key components of running a company.

SAFEs

We help you get your first VC deal done - usually a SAFE and a Side Letter.

Due Diligence

We run your due diligence process for you during your fundraise.

Priced Financing Rounds

We quarterback your Series A, Series B and beyond.

Cap Table Management

We make sure that your advisor, employee, founder and investor equity is buttoned up/

§ 03 — Your Team

Meet the attorneys who lead this practice area

Case Collins

Senior Counsel

Case has experience counseling on a wide range of transactional and corporate matters. His practice primarily focuses on early-stage and emerging companies and has led and and negotiated company and investor side financing transactions, from pre-seed simple agreements for future equity (SAFEs) and convertible notes for newly formed companies to later stage financing rounds and growth equity. He has experience advising on corporate governance matters and acting as outside general counsel for emerging companies as they develop from an early stage startup to a mature company.

Chris Grogan

Managing Partner - Emerging Companies and Venture Capital

Chris counsels startups from formation to exit, founders as they lead emerging companies, and investors in equity financing transactions. As an attorney, he has worked on equity financings and M&A transactions and has experience leading an in-house legal team advising a startup as it ramped up revenue, increased its headcount, expanded its product set, and moved into new markets.

Javed Qadrud-Din

Managing Partner & Co-founder

Javed is a Partner and Co-Founder of General Legal. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and practiced corporate law at Fenwick & West, where he advised technology companies on complex transactions.

J.P. Mohler

Managing Partner & Co-founder

J.P. is a Partner and Co-Founder of General Legal. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and practiced corporate law at Cooley LLP, where he represented startups and venture capital firms.

Liz Paisner

Managing Partner

Liz is a Managing Partner at General Legal. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her undergrad from Harvard College and practiced technology transactions at Cooley LLP, where she represented startups on a range of commercial contracts.

Robert Wennagel

Senior Counsel

Robert is a Senior Counsel at General Legal. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, and his M.B.A. from Imperial College Business School in London. He has extensive experience in litigation, employment, and commercial transactions both in-house and at large law firms.

Stephen Ratner

Sr. Counsel and Forward-Deployed Attorney

Stephen Ratner is a commercial, privacy, and product attorney who advises AI and SaaS companies on enterprise contracting, data use, technology transactions, and operational legal strategy. He has served as in-house counsel at leading AI-video SaaS and adtech companies, where he negotiated complex commercial and data agreements and partnered with product and technical teams on generative-AI, model-training, and privacy issues. Stephen also has product-management experience building legal-technology tools and AI-agent workflows, and previously practiced emerging-companies and venture-fund law at Gunderson Dettmer. Before law school, he served as Deputy Press Secretary to the Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and interned at the White House.

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