Posts tagged with “bootlaw”…
Whilst many investors and a lot of larger businesses don't believe in non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), they do crop up frequently with web start-ups. In September last year, the Bootlaw chaps held an evening event to talk through some of the surrounding issues. Notes from the night can be found on the meetup.com site. The notes are well worth a read.
A solid NDA serves to protect your intellectual property rights (IPR). With or without one, however, if you tell other businesses or individuals about your IPR you won't be able to remove that information from their heads. Better, perhaps, to avoid situations requiring an NDA.
Here at Reincubate we are not lawyers and don't purport to be. This is our opinion, with no warranty.
When offered or about to offer an NDA, we have some thoughts on best practice:
- If you can avoid needing an NDA, that's best.
- When you are asked to sign an NDA, do read it. Really.
- If an NDA is put in front of you, check to see whether it is mutual. Often they're not but should be.
- It is considered good practice to put an expiry date on non-disclosure agreements. A few years will do.
- Lawyers informally advise taking NDAs where available from the web or putting your own together from others you've seen. Whilst it's worth sanity-checking your document, it's one thing to ask a lawyer to write an NDA and another to quickly review one.
- Note the jurisdiction of the NDA. Applicable only in the State of California? Maybe not.
- Remember to sign the NDA, and keep a signed copy of any agreements you've entered into.
If you've made it this far and still need a template for a mutual non-disclosure agreement, you could take and adapt ours, though we accept no responsibility. This one works nicely in OpenOffice and Word.
London's start-up community is spread over the city with clusters around the Nathan Barley-esque “Silicon Roundabout” (map) and Bermondsey St.. Most of the companies are well networked, and getting to meet a cross-section of the people involved is surprisingly easy with membership to a bunch of groups on meetup and ning.
Saul Klein's OpenCoffee group is probably the best place to start. OpenCoffee meetings are free, weekly meet-up of entrepreneurs, investors and service providers and are a great way to get a feel for what's going on. OpenCoffee meetings are spread around the globe, so if you're not in London the odds are there might be a closer meeting.
Meetup.com has a number of other groups worth checking out, from Bootlaw, providing free legal advice, through the more exclusive DrinkTank and into the punitive beer-sodden monthly shout-fest that is MiniBar.
There are a host of periodic events, some of which are worth checking out. First off, TechCrunch UK's TechCrunch Talk events are usually interesting, and Seedcamp is fascinating for the events and noise it generates. Seedcamp brings together a lot of smart individuals, strong advice and great resources, but the process involves offering up more equity than many might expect for €50,000.
Other events, like Future of Web Apps are worth a look in, although perhaps more out of technical interest than for any networking they might offer, and there are plenty of similar events like Future of Mobile and Internet World.
There are plenty of other investment-focused groups and events, but they're for another post. Feedback on your experiences at these events -- or others -- would be appreciated!
On Wednesday I was at the first of the Bootlaw sessions (also known as the 'Barry and Danvers show'). Bootlaw is a fantastic new idea from Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu from City law firm Winston & Strawn, offering legal tips to startups, along with lashings of beer and pizza!
This first session covered NDAs and termsheets - both of which are key documents that startups are likely to encounter quite early on in their business life. Barry and Danvers are able to turn what could be quite complex subjects into clear and easy to understand language, and I look forward to future talks. You can find out more about Bootlaw at their website.
As well as the practical knowledge gained at these sort of events they can also be a good way to bump into like-minded people. With over 30 people attending the first session we see future Bootlaw events as being a good way both to learn useful information and network with other startups and entrepreneurs. I was particularly intrigued by a number of non-profit and social enterprise startups that seem to be evolving - more on that in a future post.
The event was covered by the good people at Newspepper, so video and/or pictures of the event should be available in the near future.
