Hi, grellas here - thanks to all for the kind words and glad the articles are useful. On the specific point of legal costs, it is important to use one's legal

Hi, grellas here - thanks to all for the kind words and glad the articles are useful. On the specific point of legal costs, it is important to use one's legal budget wisely because good startup lawyering is not cheap. A few pointers: (1) even if you bypass the lawyers, it usually pays to do an initial meeting with a lawyer just to get a strategic overview of your legal options and likely costs (this is usually pretty inexpensive in itself); (2) when you do use lawyers, be proactive in managing their time by getting estimates for key tasks or even fixed-fee pricing (not all projects lend themselves to this but many do, especially in the contract and corporate area); (3) never pay for a big name as an end in itself, as the vital ingredient for a good relationship with any business lawyer is that of trust and confidence (I have relationships going back 20+ years with many of my founders and entrepreneurs); and (4) don't lose heart on legal pricing, for, even though the laws are unfairly stacked in this area such as to unduly restrict cheap legal services, the modern information age has enabled many such services to be gotten at prices that are much less out of line than they used to be (e.g., typical "complex" setup with a founding team, restricted stock, IP assignments, etc. for, say, $2K; friendly angel funding for less than $5K, etc. - none of this is cheap but it is a lot less than it was a decade ago and is normally quite achievable for a startup with a founding team and clearly beats getting whip-sawed with a botched setup or funding that can so easily happen if one tries to wing it in this area). That said about lawyer pricing, I am also a proponent of founders doing what they can without lawyers whenever reasonably possible, and that is why I did this series - to help people understand how things generally work so they can make their own best decisions on such issues. I hope to do more posts as time permits. Happy reading!