IP Ownership as Leverage for Founder Equity Negotiations

One week ago yesterday, on Sunday May 28, 2023, CEOWorld magazine published an article I wrote on “IP Ownership as Leverage for Founder Equity Negotiations.”

This new article is designed for CEOs and C-level executives, who are also company founders, who have relinquished control of the company in favor of greater growth but where you now find yourself out-lawyered by investors, ending up with terms that result in loss of much of the equity value you expected to receive and hold.

This article discusses how intellectual property that you developed, that has in the past and continues to form an integral part of your company’s value and identity, and which you my potentially still have ownership claims, can be tapped into and leveraged to protect your interests, rights and distribution share in the success of the company you founded or co-founded, in connection with any of these important events that presage organic changes in the company –

• Significant round of funding,
• IPO — the company’s first public offering or its shares
• Merger, acquisition or sale of significant assets .

For any of those events, if the founder can raise a potential cloud over the company’s title to its core IP, this can provide leverage for an equitable adjustment to assure the owner’s fair share of the proceeds of the success event.

To see my full CEOWORLD magazine. article, go to LINK: https://ceoworld.biz/2023/05/28/ip-ownership-as-leverage-for-founder-equity-negotiations/

Or on my website at https://www.executiveemploymentattorney.com/ip-ownership-as-leverage-for-founder-equity-negotiations/

This was my 42nd article published in CEOWORLD since 2016. Previously, the editor advised that I can use “Featured in the CEOWORLD magazine” and the CEOWORLD “Logo” on my website and add CEOWORLD magazine in my LinkedIn profile’s “Experience Section” as an “Opinion Columnist.” and authority in the field.

On its own initiative, CEOWORLD magazine created on their website a library of Robert Adelson published articles. You can peruse this library and/or read as many of my 41 published articles as you wish. See https://ceoworld.biz/author/robert-adelson/

With more than 12.4+ million-page views, CEOWORLD magazine is the world’s leading business magazine written strictly for CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, senior management executives, business leaders, and high net worth individuals worldwide. https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceomagazine/

It is my hope that this article will be of benefit to CEOs, C-level and senior executives who are company founders and who seek leverage in negotiations after seeing diminished value to your equity position as result of vesting, re-vesting, participating preferred, investor anti-dilution and other investor-friendly terms that have worked to your disadvantage and might have a self-help remedy in IP ownership. If you or any colleague of yours has a need in this area, please do reach out to me @ 617–875–8665 or rob@attorneyadelson.com. 

Knowing Your Competition and Establishing Your Market Niche to Set Your Startup Apart

This is an article of mine published on July 7, 2020, by CEO Refresher magazine. My article is currently featured on the first page of the magazine website — http://www.refresher.com/

This article of mine is directed toward entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs of small and early stage companies, seeking angel or VC investment or trying to recruit co-founders and first employees or contractors. In such circumstances, the interested parties would be looking to the founder’s or CEO’s competitive analysis and demonstrated knowledge and mastery of his or her target marketplace to set his or her startup apart, including the following:

• What market niche you intend to enter and can dominate
• Your plan for how your company will penetrate the target
• Identity of your chief competitors, both direct competitors and indirect competitors that could be substitutes for your product or service
• The value proposition that you offer that will enable you to overcome the normal tendency for no change
• Strengths of the competition and your plan to overcome those
• Weakness of your competitors and your plan to avoid those same weaknesses
• Barriers to entry you would seek to create to surmount new competition once you gain market traction

To read more, go to https://www.executiveemploymentattorney.com/knowing-your-competition-and-establishing-your-market-niche-to-set-your-startup-apart/

It is my hope that this article will be helpful to founders, entrepreneurs, C-level and other senior executives in companies I represent, particularly those in startup and early stage companies seeking to gain traction in their market to attract angel or VC investment or other partners for growth.