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This edition of MintzTech Connect explores legal and business issues shaping today’s startup ecosystem. From whether investors should seek stronger liquidation protections in SAFEs to the core duties and practical responsibilities of private company board members, this issue provides a concise look at key considerations for founders, investors, and directors, and spotlights LEA Technologies’ work helping registered investment advisers streamline operations through clean, structured data.
Board of Directors Basics explores the essential role corporate boards play in guiding and overseeing a company. From how directors are appointed and the key decisions that require board approval to committee structures and director compensation, this article provides a practical overview of board governance fundamentals.
How to Be an Effective Director examines the responsibilities that come with serving on a private company board. The article explores directors’ fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and oversight; common conflict-of-interest scenarios; and practical tips for effective board service, offering guidance on how directors can help drive long-term company success while fulfilling their legal and governance obligations.
You built something real. Now you want to get paid: whether through acquisition, fundraise, or IPO. But a few preventable mistakes can crater your valuation or kill a deal entirely. Here’s what to lock down before anyone runs diligence on your company. Address these items at the outset before they become obstacles, to see your efforts pay dividends at the conclusion.
Our first installment of the Contract Traps: A Field Guide series helped you spot common pitfalls in “standard” customer agreements. Now, Part 2 raises the stakes.
In this installment we walk through six more provisions that can quietly shift risk onto emerging companies, from clauses that let customers rewrite the rules mid‑contract to warranty language that turns routine service hiccups into breach claims. We also highlight how seemingly harmless terms around termination, change of control, and affiliates can surface later, often at the worst possible time, like during a financing or sale. A close read now can help you avoid costly surprises down the line.
Host Gary J. Ross talks with Daniel DeWolf, Co-chair of the VC/EC practice at Mintz and adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, about the practice of venture capital funds warehousing investments.
SAFEs (the acronym for “Simple Agreement for Future Equity”) are a widely used financing tool for companies seeking to raise capital quickly and with minimal friction—particularly early‑stage companies that are not yet ready for a priced equity round. In recent years, we have seen many early-stage companies attract M&A interest before their outstanding SAFEs have converted. This trend makes it especially timely to revisit how the standard Y Combinator forms of SAFE address investor payouts when a company is sold prior to conversion, and whether investors should demand more for their high-risk investments.
Around this time of year, I always get a note from a panicked startup company that has logged in to pay their annual Delaware franchise tax and has seen an eye-watering number.
While it’s true that every year you will have to pay our good friends in DE for the pleasure of existing (death and taxes being the two certainties in life), it is also true that DE is not in the habit of bankrupting its fledgling companies with onerous franchise tax bills.
In this special edition of MintzTech Connect, we introduce the Series SAFE Preferred — a novel early-stage financing instrument designed by the Mintz VC & Emerging Companies team. SAFEs transformed early-stage investing, but lingering questions — particularly around Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) — remain unresolved. The Series SAFE Preferred combines the speed and simplicity of a SAFE with the QSBS certainty and stockholder rights of preferred stock, without forcing a premature priced round.
California recently passed the Transparent in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (SB 53), which is the first comprehensive state-level AI safety framework in the United States. This law applies mostly to the large AI developers training models with extreme compute (10^26 FLOP) or earning $500m+ annually.
If you are a founder of a tech startup, it is not likely that this law applies directly to you. However, SB53 may still materially impact your startup business. SB 53 introduces regulatory, commercial, and reputational dynamics that are likely to extend well beyond the Golden State.
Below is a summary of what founders of early-stage AI companies and their investors should be preparing for
When launching your startup, there’s no shortage of big decisions to make, but one of the most impactful at the early stages is choosing the right legal structure. Choosing the right form of entity lays the foundation for how your business will be taxed, your process for raising institutional capital, and the treatment of your expected return upon exit. The three most common types of entities are C-Corporations, Limited Liability Companies (LLCs), and S-Corporations. For most founders who intend to raise outside capital from traditional venture capital funds, a C-Corporation is most common. However, LLCs and S-Corporations provide their own unique tax advantages that may be more appropriate for certain businesses. This article provides a summary of some of the pros and cons of each entity and factors to consider as you determine which entity may be the right fit for your new venture. Consulting with a legal advisor to assess your specific situation is essential.
Why “Vesting?”
Building a company from the ground up is a risky (but hopefully rewarding) endeavor for founders. In exchange for the founders’ efforts and devotion to the success of the company, the founders take a significant equity stake in the company, with the expectation that the value of these shares will grow substantially as the company grows. However, where there are multiple founders involved, each founder will want to ensure that their co-founder(s) are incentivized to stay with the business and work hard to make it successful, rather than holding on to a large equity stake and relying on the other founders to put in the lion’s share of the work needed to grow the business. To address this concern, the initial grant of shares to each founder is often made subject to “vesting,” which links a founder’s right to keep such shares (or some portion thereof) to their continued service with the company.
One of the remarkable things about the US economy is the robust nature of startups and emerging companies. These new enterprises drive growth and create jobs, and in turn fuel additional economic activity, creating a multiplier effect on growth. This issue of MintzTech Connect focuses on an important federal tax exemption available for investing in startup enterprises: what is known as Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS).
On November 7, 2024, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released Form 15620, Section 83(b) Election (“Form 15620”), standardizing the requirements to make an election pursuant to Section 83(b) (“Section 83(b) Election”), with the promise of making electronic filing available for Form 15620 in the future. The IRS has made good on its promise and now permits electronic filing of Form 15620 to make a Section 83(b) Election through the IRS website. This change eases the administrative burden of having to physically mail the Section 83(b) Election (including a sprint to the mailroom on certain occasions to meet the 30-day deadline).
This alert explains the process for electronically submitting Form 15620 and provides a brief background on the Section 83(b) Election.
Mintz client Moolah Kicks, who was brought into the Firm via our MintzEdge start-up program, was featured in the New York Times on July 18, 2025. Founded by Natalie White, Moolah Kicks is a first-of-its-kind basketball sneaker company that designs shoes exclusively for women.
On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which included revisions to Section 1202 for “qualified small business stock” (QSBS) unchanged from those initially introduced in the Senate version of the bill. The expansion of benefits applies to QSBS acquired after July 4, 2025.
Common ground. In a successful venture capital transaction, the founders and the venture capitalists find common ground so they can work together to build a successful enterprise — listening to the other side, determining what is important to each stakeholder, and balancing the competing economic interests to find mutual success. We see this time and again in our venture capital / emerging companies ecosystem, with the result of creating many successful enterprises. Activity in our world of emerging companies remains robust, in large part by the ability of the various stakeholders to find common ground. As legal counsel, one of our primary jobs is to help facilitate this finding of common ground and to solve problems, not create problems. Imagine a world where we all focused on finding common ground!
After forming a company and dividing equity amongst the co-founders, a founding team’s next questions are typically about funding. Often among ambitious founders, venture capital first comes to mind. Today, venture capital is well-suited for growing early-stage companies but rarely available for truly starting companies. In recent years, venture capital has been deployed in larger amounts to fewer companies and there has been a corresponding shift toward larger and more frequent seed or angel investments.
As we head into the second half of 2025, the prospects for innovation in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) seem limitless. It is difficult to find an industry that hasn’t touted the potential for robotics and AI to bring significant growth and advancement: from agriculture to warehousing and logistics. Key sectors, including healthcare, financial services, retail, and manufacturing, are integrating robotics into their physical processes and attempting to optimize other aspects of their businesses through the use of AI, including the use of surgical robotics to enhance precision and efficiency in medical procedures and the adoption of robotics to increase safety, productivity and quality in manufacturing and logistics.
Negotiating and signing a Letter of Intent (LOI) is a key inflection point in the process of selling your business. Buyers and sellers both want the LOI to ensure a base level of understanding on certain key terms such as price, the structure of the deal, exclusivity, and confidentiality. However, sellers generally want, and should push for, additional details before agreeing to exclusively negotiate with a potential buyer. Below are some of the key items that sellers should ensure they have a full understanding of.