I don’t mean third-date awkwardness, or figuring out how to let him know you’re not ready to introduce him to your friends. No, we’re talking about how to handle going from start-up to break-up. Co-founders have complicated relationships: you have usually known the other founder as a co-worker or friend for months or even many…

This WSJ law blog post references a Georgetown constitutional law professor who thinks we should get rid of the Constitution because, effectively, he’s smarter than 200+ years of Americans and will get it exactly right. You should know that law journals are not edited by professionals, and law review articles are not subject to anything you would…

Many of my readers have seen my “Five-minute General Counsel” blog post series. The idea is to give readers an informed opinion that, while not specific to their situation, highlights some of the major issues involved in various decisions, such as whether to form an LLC or corporation for your tech startup. (Hint: read this…

Here’s another LinkedIn-derived question that merits a better answer. The question was essentially whether the fellow with some IP to build a business on should form an LLC or a corporation. In typical LinkedIn fashion, off-the-cuff answers that are specific end up being wrong. In my mind, if someone is asking this question, they either…

I was in Wikipedia for some reason earlier, and a click or two later, I was reading the entry for Alfred Korzybski, the inventor/founder of general semantics. (I’d had the book on a list of books to read for a reason that has long since escaped me, but it seemed hard to find, and I…

What would Supreme Court originalism look like in other disciplines? This delightful little post is sort of an originalist approach to geography.

Posted a quick reply about personal financial statements to one of Fred Wilson’s thoughts about the importance of saving and investing. As I think about it now, I suppose I should edit to make that point clearer. But it’s there even without the keywords. I’ll explore this framework further on Simplifying Complexity if there’s interest:…

In a recent post referring to Ted Wang’s “simple series A” proposal, I noted that I would separately discuss legal opinions. Non-lawyers, and lawyers new to transactional practice, have probably never really heard of a legal opinion or what it does. Briefly, the legal opinion letter is a carefully prepared document that is designed to…

This article on a simpler approach to smaller Series A venture capital financings was written by Ted Wang, a partner at Fenwick & West, a well-known Silicon Valley law firm. Caveat: Ted and I worked on a deal several years ago where he represented the investors and I the company. So, my opinions of Ted’s…

As my grandmother said, a man with two watches never knows what time it is. That’s not to be confused with “even a broken clock is right twice a day.” (I just realized that maybe Grandma had some fixation on timepieces….)

This recent Seth Godin post was another timely suggestion from Seth. (My probable #1 reason for subscribing to his blog is that he seems to really have a finger on the pulse of what is going on, with timely, succinct, no-fluff posts on issues that are popping up for me in the days right before…

This boingboing post refers to two compounds as “powerful yet nontoxic” and “safe.” Luckily the commenters are smarter and note the fact that sodium hydroxide, conveniently labeled as NaOH for those who passed high school chemisty, is LYE. Ugh. Not recommended. Knowledge is not a dangerous thing. Stupidity is dangerous. Thinking you have knowledge is…