When your startup goes through due diligence for an investment round or an exit, investor’s or buyer’s legal counsel will typically send a laundry list of document requests. These documents range from the startup’s bylaws to stock option agreements to third party contracts to prior financing documents.
Quite often, these diligence materials are not readily available and/or can be difficult to track down. Or, only pieces of documents can be found (e.g, a signature page rather than the full document).
This leads to “corporate cleanup” which is ultimately a time consuming and expensive process. Most of this time and expense can be prevented with the use of a quality scanner. (In our experience, online signature services are only good for a one-off contract.)
Good scanners today won’t wreck your burn rate. For example, the fujitsu line of scanners like the iX500 can usually be found in the $420 to $495 range. We have a fujitsu here as a backup scanner to our large Bizhub.
If your startup raises a round in the low six figures or more, it should purchase a scanner soon after the wire comes through. It will save time and money down the road.
Ryan RobertsPartner
Ryan Roberts is a startup and venture capital attorney and partner at Roberts Zimmerman PLLC with more than two decades of experience advising high‑growth startups and venture capital investors. He is the author of Acceleration: What All Entrepreneurs Must Know About Startup Law and StartupLawyer.com
