Operating at the intersection of commercial law, finance and intellectual property, our Start Up and Scale Up team guides young businesses from early-stage establishment through to scale and exit – giving entrepreneurs and founders support to bring their ideas to life.

Below are some examples of the services we provide to support clients:

• Commercialising intellectual property.
• Business structuring to protect business owners, establish a sustainable and investor ready corporate structure and effectively navigate tax liabilities
• Founder Agreements
• Shareholder arrangements to incentivise and protect all parties
• Commercial contracts to create value and mitigate risk in trade with customers and suppliers
• Company secretarial to manage your company compliance obligations
• Capital raising (evaluating opportunities, document and completing transactions) for both business owners and investors.
• Privacy, data protection and security to reduce risk and support compliance

Over the past year, our Start Up and Scale Up team has supported many founders in the following ways:

• Setting new businesses up for success with shareholders agreements
• IP strategies and core commercial document suites.
• Guiding companies through the process of negotiating and documenting seed rounds, including SAFEs, convertible notes and equities.
• Advising on series A/B investments.
• Negotiating and documenting pay days for founders (trade sales).
• Defending trademarks.
• Conducting IP due diligence.
• Setting up and managing employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).

For Founders at the boot-strapping stage, knowing where and when to invest in legal advice is a conundrum. Money is tight, prospects uncertain and the temptation to cut corners is strong. Solely or heavily relying on “standard” or “off-the-shelf” templates to document core stakeholder relationships is unwise and creates risk.  “Undoing” arrangements documented in contracts that are not fit for purpose is often time consuming and costly, and sometimes can delay or scuttle funding opportunities.

With decades of collective experience and a client portfolio that includes multi-million dollar success stories, we understand how to make limited budgets work. Through smart allocation of resources, we will help you identify and mitigate the issues that present the highest level of legal and commercial risk.

Cutting to the core of complex market, regulatory and commercial considerations, we help you anticipate and avert problems before they arise – equipping you with the tools to future proof your enterprise throughout the business lifecycle. As FCW is a full service firm, our clients enjoy the advantage of in-house resources from every area of law intersecting with the Start Up and Scale Up space, resulting in a unique blend of advice and expertise.

Our integrated approach not only protects you from the pitfalls of corporate, privacy, IP and workplace law, it sets you on a path which strikes the right balance between opportunity and risk.