Presentation deck from City of Sydney- Tech Start Ups 101 seminar (26th March 2015). Topic: How it all comes together, What works and what doesn’t Presented by Damien Andreasen Cofounder and CEO of LawPath, Australia's fastest growing online legal service provider. Not to be seen as legal advice, the deck provides examples off simple mistakes to avoid when taking the first steps from concept to MVP.

1. How it all comes together, what works and what
doesn’t
Damien Andreasen
LawPath Cofounder
damien@lawpath.com.au
Twitter: @damienandreasen

2. The right stuff - Cofounders
Tech
MarketingSales
Build
Measure
Learn
“Strategy without execution is hallucination!”
Michael Roach, CGI CEO

3. For the majority of CEOs, 10% of their time is spent on
strategy development and +90% of their time is spent on
doing – execution
Study by Karl Moore on habits of 200+ CEOs

4. Setting the right foundations
Idea
Verbal Agreement
Cofounder
Agreement
Shareholders
AgreementGoodwill
==
Cofounder/s
● Founder and business interests aligned
● Input from founders (effort/cash) agreed to
● Equity split | Vesting | Investment structure agreed to
● Ambiguity, responsibilities and input from Founders not
clear
● No structure for Equity split | Vesting | Investment
● Hard to raise Seed funding

5. Vesting and Cliffs - how they will save your business
Vesting: Earning equity over a defined period of time. Usually 4 years
Cliff: A period of time before your shares initially vest. Usually a 12 month period

6. 2 Founders split equity in the business 50/50
No cliff, No vesting
One of the Founders leaves in the first 12 months
Takes 50% stake in the business
Remaining Founder faces:
● Limited ability to incentivise new Team members
● Reduced motivation to continue building existing
business
● Cost to buy back equity from departed Founder
Vesting and Cliffs - how they will save your business

7. Creating and protecting a brand
Create a brand name
Register .AU Domain
Create logo | build website |
start marketing
Check to see if .COM + .AU
are available
Check no one using
Business name
Check no existing
trademarks
Check social to make sure
you have clear comms
channel
● Thousands of dollars wasted
● Loss of time to rebrand
● Creates customer confusion
● Legal liabilities for potential
losses
Brand being used on Social
or intl.domain not available
=
=
● Clear communication channel to customer
● Ability to invest in marketing and PR

8. Protect your Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property can be an invention, a trademark, a design or the
practical application of an idea
Founders, Employees, Contractors and any 3rd party
you engage must sign the rights to the intellectual
property created over to the business.
Most investors will check the business owns the IP created before contributing capital

9. Don’t get Winklevoss’d

10. Takeaways
Cofounders: skills should be complementary, execution first strategy second
Equity: vesting and cliffs will save your business
Brand: Research everything before you settle on a name and then make sure you protect it
IP: Anything created on behalf of the company must be assigned to it
www.lawpath.com.au | 1800LAWPATH