Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition

When the vast majority of people hear the word “entrepreneur” they think of a person that had an idea and set off to build a company from scratch. Building something from nothing is daunting to many people and the fear of failure and the unknown represent a large barrier that prevents many would be entrepreneurs from taking the leap into owning their own businesses. One option for those would be entrepreneurs that are a bit more risk adverse is to take the route of entrepreneurship through acquisition. Entrepreneurship through acquisition is, in its simplest form, just buying a business that is already operating.

So Many Things To Do; So Little Funding To Do It

The start of a new business is a pivotal time for any entrepreneur. Unless you happen to be a serial entrepreneur who has played this game before, you are likely overwhelmed with your to-do list and rarely feel like you have a good sense of whether you are making the right strategic choices for your fledgling company. Many first-time entrepreneurs are laser-focused on the product or service they are hoping to bring to the masses, but with that laser focus they may overlook some important considerations, like having the proper legal protections in place.

Even those entrepreneurs who have thought through legal considerations as part of their business planning process often try to get by with the bare minimum in the early days. Let’s be honest, the term “legal” often conjures thoughts of grey clouds in an entrepreneur’s otherwise sunny and optimistic vision for their new company. One of the key drivers of a start-up not putting in place all the legal protections that will help it to be successful as it continues to grow is a lack of funding to obtain expert advice. With minimal available resources, most entrepreneurs prefer to focus their initial dollars on getting their product or service to market.

Keeping Good Records – An Often Overlooked Element of the Business Exit Plan

With all of the long nights and frantic days that can come with starting and running a business, the practice of keeping paperwork neatly organized can easily fall to the bottom of a to-do list. It is certainly understandable that you might consider time spent networking with potential customers and funding sources to be far more important than making sure your company’s contracts are organized in a logical order; however, having a good handle on your paperwork can be more important than you may think.

If you suddenly find yourself awash with customer demand, you may also soon find yourself across the table from a sophisticated investor that is offering either to invest a large sum of money or, hopefully, to acquire your business for an even more tidy sum. That investor is going to want to conduct its due diligence on your business to ensure it is worth the money. The diligence process can be lengthy and expensive for both the investor and you.

Fairness and Moderation in Negotiations – You Have All the Power; Should You Use It?

I recently came across a LinkedIn post about the use of negotiation power. The post argued that even when you have all the leverage, you would be wise to think through crushing your opposition just because you can.

As an attorney, I certainly understand the logic in this because you won’t always have the upper hand and people tend to have very long memories when it comes to people that push hard just for the sake of pushing. I like to believe that on an individual level most other people also adhere to some sort of unwritten rule that a little bit of fairness goes a long way, but when you move up to the level of a business it seems like this unwritten fairness doctrine tends to quickly go by the wayside (and yes, to some extent, we the attorneys are likely to blame).

Minnesota’s Ban on Employment Non-Competes

Non-compete provisions have long been a staple of employment agreements in most companies, especially smaller, start-up ventures where it is more likely for the average employee to have access to the company’s “secret sauce” as part of their day-to-date duties. While protections on the “secret sauce” itself are not changing, mechanisms whereby a company might prevent employees, or independent contractors, from going to work for a company’s direct competitor the day after handing in their company access badge have all but disappeared, thanks to a recent spending bill that was passed by the Minnesota legislature.

Will Machine Learning Make Us Less Intelligent?

If you are wondering whether I used AI to write this blog post, the answer is no. This will soon become obvious since no respectable AI program would go off on tangents as much as I do.

Having graded many undergraduate student essays, it is very disheartening to know that students can now ask a computer program to write a full essay for them on just about any topic in a matter of minutes. Will this new machine learning craze fundamentally change the next generation’s ability to do basic, fundamental research and writing?

The Allure of a Family Business

I recently attended an event where the former CEO of a well-known company discussed what it is like to run a family business. The first thought that went through my head was “wow, if all the members of my extended family owned a business together it would be an absolute disaster!”

While I still whole-heartly agree with that statement, I also got to thinking about many of the benefits that would come from being part of a family business. Of the people I know who are actively involved in a family business, which is surprisingly a lot when I stop to think about it, almost all of them have commented on the sense of purpose that they get from their work.

Metals Here, Metals There, Metals Everywhere

What do most environmentalists and techies have in common? Metals. Whether you are trying to save the planet from greenhouse gases or just really like to have the latest phone from that certain fruit-named company and a self-driving electric car from that one car company whose CEO also likes to shoot stuff into space, you are likely a consumer of a lot of metals, many of which you may never have even heard. So, you are a consumer of metals, so what?