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Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

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Re: Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

#5
I feel like in general, the complex structures and legalese in the startup world are set up against founders and against employees. Is there anyone pushing for simplification or standard forms or structures that are not just in the VC’s or acquirer’s interests?

Re: Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

#6

The "P" in "Parties" also needed to be capitalized.

What I don’t get is even in the absence of capitalization wouldn’t the default interpretation be whatever the prevailing reasonable meaning would be?

Re: Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

#8

I feel like in general, the complex structures and legalese in the startup world are set up against founders and against employees. Is there anyone pushing for simplification or standard forms or structures that are not just in the VC’s or acquirer’s interests?

Attorneys like repeat business. They’re much more likely to do business again with a private equity firm than a founder, so even if they nominally represent the founder they’re not going to do anything that would jeopardize their prospects for future business with the private equity firm.

Re: Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

#9
post #8

I feel like in general, the complex structures and legalese in the startup world are set up against founders and against employees. Is there anyone pushing for simplification or standard forms or structures that are not just in the VC’s or acquirer’s interests?

Attorneys like repeat business. They’re much more likely to do business again with a private equity firm than a founder, so even if they nominally represent the founder they’re not going to do anything that would jeopardize their prospects for future business with the private equity firm.

> so even if they nominally represent the founder they’re not going to do anything that would jeopardize their prospects for future business with the private equity firm.

Ouch! Seems like there should be some 'unionised' legal representation for founders. Seems like representation for founder and VC to be a conflict in interests.

This seems to be much heavily emphasised on capital vs talent.

Re: Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'

#10

The "P" in "Parties" also needed to be capitalized.

What I don’t get is even in the absence of capitalization wouldn’t the default interpretation be whatever the prevailing reasonable meaning would be?

In legalese, there is a massive difference between proper and improper nouns. Capitalization matters a tremendous amount.
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