Austin Startup Attorneys & Lawyers

Legal Tips and Information

Building Your Startup in Austin

The City of Austin is known for live music, creativity and “being weird”.  A haven for innovation and ingenuity, within those Austin city limits you’ll find a strong community that supports entrepreneurship and fosters the “built in Austin” movement.  One lookup at the event calendar for tech and other startup enterprises shows a city bursting with new opportunities.  No less than 5 events geared at building your dream happen each week, helping you connect with experts and other Austin dream builders. 

When you art to make plans to build your dream in Austin, you should search for the best startup attorney to meet your needs.  Crafting your new business is exciting but it can also be challenging if you don’t have all the right tools.  An Austin start-up attorney will have the skills you need to build your dream on a strong foundation so that you can reach for the city limits and beyond. 

Creating a Strong Foundation

While you’re putting your plans together to build a strong and vibrant new business, you need to take care to build on a strong foundation.  A startup lawyer in Austin will help you make the right decisions for a solid structure.

Your Austin startup lawyer will help you focus on the essential business building blocks.  If you have partners, your startup attorney will help you and your co-founders lay out an agreement that spells out all of your expectations.  Salaries, profit sharing, loans, management and even the possibility for future sale of your new company should be considered.  With the help of a startup lawyer in Austin, you can avoid the mistakes that have nearly toppled other startup giants.  These days avoiding problems isn’t as simple as merely owning 51% of your company. 

Another decision that your Austin startup attorney will help you make is the right corporate form for your new business. Depending on your future goals, the type of business you want to grow and how you plan to raise money, you’ll want to consider a few forms including a limited liability company and general partnership.  If you don’t need (or want!) partners, you may still want to form a corporation.  The best startup attorneys in Austin will understand the pros and cons of all these business forms, and a few others. 

One often overlooked brick in a strong startup foundation are business documents.  While it’s sometimes easy to find a sample contract on the interwebs that looks “good enough”, not having documents that are tailored to your startup and its products and services may be a liability as your grow.  Your Austin startup attorney will help draft documents that are right for you.

Funding Your Growth    

If you’re like most startups in Austin, you need money to help build your dream into a reality. A startup lawyer will help you not only review and understand the options available, but will also help you avoid potential financial disaster.  Even now, law suits have been filed in Austin by startups claiming to have been taken advantage of or even defrauded by investors.  You Austin startup attorney will make sure that this doesn’t happen to you.

One of the decisions you’ll need to make will be the kind of money you are willing to take.  Are you comfortable with loans, even if you need to sign as a personal guarantor? If not, maybe you are willing to issue ownership in the company or stock.  If you choose to issue stock, you have a few more choices there, including an IPO.  All of the decisions require a careful review of the potential upsides and downsides.  Government rules and regulations all need to be considered.  As you assemble all of the funds you need to construct a strong financial base for your startup, Austin startup attorneys will understanding and tools you need.  Making the rights decisions when it comes to money can make the difference between a startup that rises to new heights and one that never makes it past the ground floor.

Protecting Your Property

If you’re like most startups, one of your most important assets is your intellectual property.  Your intellectual property includes all of those things you’ve created from your name and logo to a new product or service.  At the very least, you’ll probably want a trademark for your name and logo design. If your startup is a business that’s offering a new and innovative product or service that you invented (or even perfected), a patent may also be important. 

A startup lawyer in Austin understands that are a lot of building blocks involved in setting up a startup from scratch.  They not only know that you may need trademarks and patents (you probably thought of that!), but they also know that even beyond these protections from outside sources, you may need protections from within.  Noncompetition and confidentiality agreements can make sure that your trade secrets, ideas and ways of doing business stay in house. 

The best startup attorneys in Austin will also remember your website.  It’s not enough to have great words and pictures for your new startup.  Your Austin startup attorney will understand that having privacy and usage policies on your website will protect you from others taking your ideas through the back door.   These policies will also tell your customers what you’ll do with their information, keeping you in compliance with all those rules that you might not have thought about. 

Building to the Next Level

You’ve built a new business in Austin that’s ready to go to the next level.  Hopefully you’ve found one of the best startup attorneys in Austin to be your partner in framing your company’s growth.  But even if you haven’t, it’s not too late to get the expert help that you need. 

A startup lawyer in Austin knows the ins and outs of the issues that face startups ready to grow.  It may be time to buy a new building or lease some new space.  Your startup attorney will not only help you understand the agreements that go along with those choices, but can also help you decide which choice is right for you.

It may be that you’re weird Austin idea has really caught on and you want to expand by letting other people join your team.  Creating a franchise might be the right decision. Your Austin startup attorney will give you guidance about not only franchise laws but also the tax changes that might happen.   

Whatever your options include for your company’s future, a startup lawyer in Austin has the understanding of the landscape and the tools you need to reach your next level of success. 

You’re Built in Austin

Austin is a great place to build your dream.  It’s a community that loves innovation and ideas, and even likes being a little weird.  There are no limits to how big you can build your dream in Austin.  To help you reach those heights, you can count on a startup lawyer in Austin to be on your team of master craftsman.  These experts in startup businesses have all the tools you need to forge a solid foundation for your startup to grow.  While it’s sometimes easy to think that you can figure it out as you go along, a soft spot in your company infrastructure can cause you to stray from your plans.  Find a startup lawyer in Austin that understands your dream, even if it’s weird.  The best startup attorneys in Austin understand that you want to push past limits and will give you the tools to make sure you can succeed.    Your Austin startup attorney will focus on making sure that your company is built on solid bedrock so that you can reach the Austin city limits and beyond.