Mentorship in Motion: Reflections from a Summer with Our Summer Associates

This summer, I’ve had the privilege of working more closely with the Lathrop GPM class of summer associates as one of the work coordinators. Having experienced a summer program disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic firsthand, I’ve especially appreciated the chance to help this talented group navigate what is, in some ways, a two-month job interview—all while also exploring career paths, learning about different legal practices, locating the printers and bathrooms, and hopefully enjoying a bit of the beautiful Twin Cities summer in between.

Maybe it’s a bit of nostalgic projection for an experience I didn’t fully get to enjoy, but I genuinely hope our summer associates walk away feeling supported during this unique and formative stage of their legal journey. To me, that’s the essence of mentorship.

Startup Law 101: 5 Mistakes That Can Blow Up Your Startup – Don’t Sign the “totally fine” ChatGPT Contract

Startups move fast, but legal mistakes move faster—and they hit harder. Whether you’re bootstrapping or backed by big VC, your lawyer isn’t just a formality—they’re your firewall. Too many founders treat legal like an afterthought, then wonder why things explode. From boardroom to courtroom, these are five founder mistakes that separate the bold from the bankrupt. So, before you launch that app, hire that friend, or sign that “totally fine” ChatGPT contract, read this:

1. Don’t Wait Until You’re in “Oh Sh*t” Mode to Call Your Lawyer

In the startup world, things move fast—your legal strategy should move faster. Waiting to bring in counsel until there’s a co-founder fallout, a misfired contract, or a surprise lawsuit is like trying to install brakes after your Tesla hits 90 mph. We’ve seen it all: 

• One founder stops showing up but still owns half the company because no one drafted a real agreement. 
• Someone grabs a one-page operating agreement off Google that leaves you stuck with default state rules that don’t fit your company’s needs. 

A little legal foresight upfront saves hours of cleanup later.

Fall, Football, and Figuring it Out.

I love September. When the calendar flips to September, it means a lot of things to a lot of people - it’s the arrival of Fall (Fall is the best season, by the way), students begrudgingly returning to school to the delight of their parents, and for a lot of Americans, its marks the return of their favorite sport, FOOTBALL.

About 72% of Americans identify as football fans, that’s more than 241 million people. Football is big business. The NFL generated roughly $20 billion of revenue in 2023 and during the Super Bowl, companies paid $7 million per 30-second commercial. College Football TV rights alone accounted for roughly $4 billion in 2023. That doesn’t include College Football’s merchandise, ticket sales, sponsorships, or any NIL deals, including the recent deal with EA Sports to use the Name Image and Likeness of current College Football players in their new videogame, “creatively” named (in a generic way my trademark colleagues would hate) “College Football 25.” Football is America’s favorite sport, but its also becoming the favorite business of many Americans too.

Gender Diversity in Management. How? That’s the Question.

In a recent viral video, pedestrians were asked a simple yet telling question: name a female CEO. Astonishingly, most struggled to come up with an answer, a dilemma I, too, encountered. Only two names surfaced consistently: Whitney Wolfe Herd, co-founder of Bumble Inc., and Cathie Wood of ARK Investment Management.

As a female attorney deeply immersed in the entrepreneurial realm, this revelation stirred a mix of surprise and disappointment. It underscores a stark reality: women remain conspicuously underrepresented in upper echelons of corporate leadership worldwide. But amidst this sobering reality, there is a glimmer of hope. Consciousness regarding gender disparity in management is on the rise, prompting legislative action in certain jurisdictions aimed at fostering gender diversity on corporate boards, albeit with mixed outcomes.

Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, 2011)

The years between 1973 and 1979 took me from high school through college, a time during which I worked in my first job, cast my first vote in a presidential election, and generally prepared for life as an adult. Historians have labeled the era “a kidney stone of a decade,” but, from the perspective of teenage me, they were pretty great times. Between the end of the Vietnam War (I fortunately fell into the age group that avoided having to register for the draft) and the onset of the Reagan years (during which I engaged with life as a yuppie), life felt carefree, as I imagine it did for many a young person raised in suburban middle-class comfort during those years.

Lately, as I’ve mused over the way we were (to borrow the title of a 1973 Oscar-winning film), I’ve started to recall some not-so-great things that were only at the very edge of my consciousness at the time: an oil embargo, stagflation, unrest in the Middle East, and post-Watergate distrust of and weariness with politicians. No doubt, in retrospect, these were weird times, characterized by, as historian David Kennedy once observed, “the odd blend of political disillusionment and pop-culture daffiness that gave the 1970s their distinctive flavor.”

Brian Klaas, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (Scribner, 2021)

It’s a view of human nature that we all accept. It tends to shape how we view our political affairs, our economic institutions, our business practices, and really any realm of human endeavor. It is expressed as an aphorism of only two words: “power corrupts.”

Political Scientist Brian Klaas—a Minnesotan, a contemporary of one of my daughters at a local high school, a graduate of two institutions of higher learning with which I am familiar, and now a professor at the University of London—has set out to examine this idea in light of the question, “Does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power?”

The answer, it seems, is yes—both are true. While Klaas’s analysis focuses on obviously nefarious activities, he includes some aspects of corporate endeavor and business behavior along the same spectrum. His focus is on people who have wielded “enormous power,” be they “cult leaders, war criminals, despots, coup plotters, torturers, mercenaries, generals, propagandists, rebels, corrupt CEOs, [or] convicted criminals.”

TSMC

About this time last year, I posted my top five favorite podcasts for entrepreneurs. Avid readers may remember that one podcast, Acquired, was far and away my favorite listen—and I am happy to report that after a year of searching, downloading, subscribing and un-subscribing, Acquired still remains a must-listen in my podcast rotation.

For those who do not remember (or did not heed my suggestion), each episode of Acquired examines the history of a different tech company and the founder(s) who built them. Most of the companies featured on Acquired are familiar (think Apple, Uber, Lyft), but every so often, the hosts, Ben and David, pull back the hood of a Company I have never heard of before—the most recent case being Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Celebrating Female Entrepreneurs on International Women’s Day

International Women's Day is a global day marked annually on March 8 that celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. In honor of International Women’s Day, I would like to highlight just a few of the delightful and practical women-founded businesses that I value having in my life.

OUI the People. Karen Young is the founder of OUI the People, which is a direct-to-consumer beauty company that is committed “to changing the language of beauty.” According to Young, when she was younger, her mother banned beauty magazines in the house but subscribed to National Geographic. That sort of practicality is alive and well in OUI. OUI stands out by delivering realistic and effective tools for living your best life in your skin while leaving the antiquated view of beauty behind. OUI’s razors are the best!

Freda Salvador. This amazing company, founded by Cristina Palomo-Nelson and Megan Papay, makes shoes that have become a staple in my closet. The shoes are amazingly feminine, comfortable, durable and unique, while also being timeless in appearance. Freda Salvador also makes a point of highlighting inspiring women in its “The Freda Women Series.” Most recently, the series highlighted Amber Lewis, founder of Amber Interior Design. Amber’s designs provide fresh inspiration for those that love the cool California canyon styling (like me!). 

What Every Entrepreneur Should be Doing Right Now (from Mark Cuban)

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore
CC BY-SA 3.0

I recently viewed a webinar hosted by Entrepreneurs’ Organization featuring serial entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban. The webinar promised to be a “candid discussion on the state of entrepreneurship during this challenging season.”

The webinar lived up to its billing, and I want to share some of Mr. Cuban’s entrepreneurship advice with you, including the following: 

• Communicate in a brutally honest and authentic way with your employees, vendors, and customers. They are all experiencing the same things you are right now.
• Ask questions of others, and solicit ideas from individuals at all levels of your organization. The mentality of “this is the way we’ve always done it” may no longer be appropriate. It’s time to innovate.
• Learn something new. Learn how your in-home platforms, such as Alexa, can help you with your work. Learn about artificial intelligence and robotics. They are the way of the future, and we need them to compete with other countries. If you can learn how to do it at a lower cost, you can ease your reliance on offshore resources and start to control your own destiny. 
• Rather than letting your fears paralyze you, turn them into motivation. 
• Become an expert in the risks businesses are currently facing. Whether it be your employees, vendors, or customers, as we begin reopening, people will be trusting businesses with their health. 
• Get creative and become an expert in social distance planning. Come up with new ideas to do business in ways that people want. How can you do something and still make it interesting? 
• Treating people equally doesn’t mean treating them the same. Everyone within your organization has a different skillset and background that can contribute to the success of the business. You just have to find the appropriate fit.

And lastly, what would advice from Mark Cuban be if it didn’t include a sports analogy? So remember that all the great ones are the first ones in and the last ones to leave. There is someone working 24 x 7 x 365 to kick your butt

Remembering Kobe, the Entrepreneur

Last month, we lost Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others in a tragic helicopter crash in California.

We all know Bryant as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, and since his passing I have learned more about how he was perhaps an even greater father figure for his daughters. But here we want to recognize Bryant for the entrepreneurism that he diligently pursued with the same “mamba” mentality that earned him many achievements on the hardcourt.

First of all, I could spend paragraphs here analyzing how Bryant’s book, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, can be turned into fuel for entrepreneurs. If you have not yet read it, do so. For now, given the limited lines I have available, I’ll present you with some of his philosophy.

Bryant explained once that the difference between basketball and entrepreneurship is that in entrepreneurship there is no competitor “directly in front of you;” instead, as an entrepreneur, the challenge is to be constantly creative in a way that impacts the market you are trying to dominate. “But even more so,” he said, “when you play basketball you’ve got to take time off, in order to avoid injury. In business and creativity there is no off switch. Your brain is constantly working.” I think every entrepreneur can attest that the brain is always ticking. (But the picture of Bryant shooting hoops in his pajamas with a cast on one hand makes me wonder whether he ever actually rested, on the court or otherwise!)

Alastair Mactaggart Joins My Privacy Hall Of Fame

“I just think the data use by these companies is out of control”

--Alastair Mactaggart, California Real Estate Developer

Who is Alastair Mactaggart? He has done more than any other person to expand the privacy rights of individuals in the United States. In 2016, Mactaggart, who earned a fortune in Bay Area real estate, was talking with a Google employee about the amount of personal information collected by companies. This casual conversation led him to fund a citizens initiative that was set to appear on the November 2018 ballot in California. It would have given California residents extensive new rights to control how their data is collected and used by businesses. Following intensive lobbying by tech groups the ballot initiative was withdrawn by Mactaggart and in its place the California legislature (in less than a week) passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Effective January 1, 2020 the CCPA becomes the most extensive consumer privacy legislation ever passed in the United States. It gives Californians sweeping new data privacy rights, including a first-of-its-kind private right of action that will encourage lawsuits against businesses who fail to comply with the data breach portion of the CCPA. What a difference one person (with a lot of money) can make.

Exercise: Coming Soon to Your Workplace?

Like most people who work in an office, I spend most of my workday sitting. Although I periodically use a standing workstation or walk to the printer (right outside my office), my workday is generally a sedentary affair. Exercise is part of my evening and weekend schedule.  

Perhaps that is why a recent article in the Harvard Business Review by Carl Cederstrom and Torkild Thanem titled “The Swedish CEO Who Runs His Company Like a CrossFit Gym” caught my eye. The article profiles Bjorn Borg, a Swedish sports fashion company (yes, named for the tennis star), and in particular, its CEO, Henrik Bunge. Bunge, not like some other CEOs, has implemented mandatory company workouts.  Think your yoga class or boot-camp session at the office. That sounds simultaneously inspiring and terrifying.
  
Bunge is part of a generation of CEOs who are throwing concepts like “transformational” and “authentic” leadership to the wayside in favor of “fitness leadership.” The theory is that work and fitness go hand-in-hand: Much like at the gym, the harder you work, the better your results. Bunge was brought in as CEO in 2014, when the company was struggling. His view was that the 60 employees had to “train harder, measure our goals better, and become a better team” and that success could be achieved through a marriage of exercise and work. All employees are now required to take fitness tests twice a year and there are mandatory Friday fitness classes, team wall squat and push-up competitions, and the occasional game of ping pong. 

Fearless Commerce: A Showcase of Local Black Female Entrepreneurs

With an increase of 322% since 1997, the State of Women-Owned Business Report named Black women as the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. A recent Nielson Company study, African-American Women: Our Science, Her Magic, further quantifies Black women’s power to influence the economy, media, and politics. Much like most of the country, the Twin Cities local community is rich with minority female entrepreneurs that represent a diversity of industries. 

But despite the impact this group has on the local and national economy, it has struggled to gain visibility and has largely gone unrepresented in entrepreneurial publications. Fearless Commerce seeks to change this. A nationally recognized company co-founded by two local Black female entrepreneurs, Fearless Commerce showcases local Minneapolis-Saint Paul minority women business owners by featuring their stories and highlighting their successes in industries ranging from medicine to architecture to entertainment and fitness. 

The inaugural issue of the Fearless Commerce publication launched in October 2017, and has since continued to foster innovation within the local entrepreneur community and communities of color. Keep an eye out for the next issue, available this spring. 

Ernest Shackleton: Explorer and Entrepreneur

One of five (yes, five) new musicals I saw during my recent Memorial Day weekend trip to NYC was an off-Broadway show called Ernest Shackleton Loves Me, and yes, it got me thinking about the qualities of a successful entrepreneur.

For those who don’t know, Ernest Shackleton was a famous British explorer who wanted to be the first person to lead an expedition to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In August of 1914 he departed with a crew of 28 people. After his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice (and later sunk), he and his crew were forced to abandon their quest. Remarkably, the entire crew survived the trip, which took over two years and included 497 days without touching land, mostly stuck on floating ice!

So, what does this have to do with entrepreneurship? Well, many people have written about Shackleton, even about Shackleton as entrepreneur. Most reference how his eternal optimism—even in difficult times—and keen leadership ability were the reason for the successful ending to the story.

Jack Mayer, Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project (Long Trail Press, 2011)

I have been known to find—or perhaps more accurately, create—an entrepreneurial angle on some pretty esoteric topics, so much so that my co-editor has from time to time challenged me to do so with some topic out of left field.

It just so happens that the day on which this blog post comes due is Holocaust Remembrance Day (also known as Yom HaShoah). A reasonably enlightened person might wonder how an entrepreneurial lesson might be drawn from the marking of the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

For starters, consider the definition of “entrepreneur.”  Those of us who practice corporate law have a very specific idea of what an entrepreneur is—we know one when we see one.  But our use of that word is, in fact, a very narrow interpretation.  According to Dictionary.com, an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time (Harper Business, 2015)

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a book that is actually about business, something I try to do from time to time (even though frequent readers know I trend toward historical fiction). Casting about for something to write about for this post, the perfect subject presented itself in a high-gloss alumni magazine that appears in my mailbox every other month. 

It seems a professor at Stanford Business School, Jeffrey Pfeffer, has written a somewhat iconoclastic analysis of the business leadership industry. Perfect. When it comes to business reading, my view (which I share with any number of our entrepreneurial clients) is this: The more iconoclastic, the better. The title—Leadership BS—makes it pretty clear whose ox is going to be gored. 

John Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (Random House, 2004).

“The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope.”

—Winston Churchill 

I write these words on the eve of the first debate between the two major party candidates for the American presidency in 2016. This year’s contest has me, like many of you, shaking my head with despair. Yes, I will vote for one of these candidates, but not with any enthusiasm. In that respect, I think I share something with most other Americans, regardless of whom they support. We’re choosing who we perceive to be the lesser evil, or even choosing one candidate simply because that candidate is not the other candidate.

Although this election has plumbed new depths when it comes to the popularity—or lack thereof—of the major party nominees, I have to remind myself that at times in the past the best of our leaders have been neither popular nor even merely likable. Jon Meacham, in his Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, reminds us that neither Franklin Roosevelt nor Winston Churchill was a pillar of virtue, but “together they managed to bring order out of chaos,” which is a skill that is also useful if you are to be a successful entrepreneur.

More Than a Hobby: The Story of Hobby Lobby

This past weekend, I finished reading the book More Than A Hobby: How a $600 Start-Up Became America’s Home & Craft Superstore. The book, written by Hobby Lobby Founder and CEO David Green, recounts the Green family’s modest beginnings in 1970, operating a miniature picture frame-making business out of their garage, and eventually turning it into Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a privately-owned arts and crafts retail giant that is today headquartered in Oklahoma City and operates over 600 stores nationwide.  

Understandably, for readers who are not arts and crafts enthusiasts, your only familiarity with Hobby Lobby may be its role as a defendant in the controversial Supreme Court case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which was decided in June of 2014. The Green family’s Christian values certainly influence Hobby Lobby’s business practices, including the chain’s retail hours of 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, the closure of all stores on Sundays, and the full-time paid chaplain at corporate headquarters. But religion aside, certain of Hobby Lobby’s other business practices may prove influential to entrepreneurs.  

The Widow Clicquot and the Business of Bubbly

The pop of a cork evokes celebrations, the Jazz Age, weddings, and New Year’s Eve kisses.  A few years ago, I traveled to Champagne, France, with my mother and sister in search of the birthplace of the alluring bubbly. As Francophiles and budding oenophiles, we were in heaven. 

After touring prestigious Champagne houses, small family-run Champagne production facilities, charming villages, and picturesque vineyards, my passion for Champagne has grown, from both a gustatory and a scholarly perspective.  Along the latter lines, I recently read Tilar J. Mazzeo’s The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It (Harper Collins, 2008), an intoxicating biography of the entrepreneurial Grande Dame and the origins of the business of Champagne.

What: Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (Simon & Schuster, 2000)

Why: The story of the men whose entrepreneurial dreams and competitive spirit created the coast-to-coast economy.

As the 150th anniversary of the Civil War comes to a close (you were aware of this, right?), the observance of another 150th anniversary has just begun.

Maybe I’m more in tune to this anniversary than your average Joe. I come from a railroad family; my grandfather was gainfully employed by the Great Northern Railway for his entire life, a position that shielded his family from the ravages of the Great Depression. Then there’s my civil engineer father, whose greatest joy in life was simply to build things.

I’m speaking, of course, of the sesquicentennial of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Stephen Ambrose calls this “the greatest achievement of the American people in the nineteenth century,” and it’s hard to argue with this assessment. Before the Union Pacific drove west to meet the Central Pacific building toward the east at a lonely place in Utah called Promontory Summit, before the golden spike completed the first direct railroad line from New York to San Francisco, it took eight months and cost $1,000 or more to travel between those two cities. Afterward, anyone with a week at their disposal and $65 in their pocket could make the trip.

The effect on the economy—and, indeed, on the everyday lives of Americans—was nothing short of miraculous. “Things that could not be imagined before the Civil War now became common.” A national market for goods and financial instruments emerged, leading to the creation of a national culture.

And all of it came about because of a few entrepreneurs. Take, for example, the principals of the Central Pacific, the “Big Four:” Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, and Mark Hopkins. Living in California in the early 1980s, I couldn’t escape the legacies of these men: I was a student at Stanford University, I kept what little money I had in the Crocker National Bank (soon thereafter acquired by Wells Fargo), and I had drinks with friends at the Top of the Mark (the rooftop bar at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco).

I only wish I’d known more about how their entrepreneurial dreams in a very real sense built this country.