If you follow this blog, then you probably know new posts have been harder to find than a four-leafed clover in the desert. But I had a good reason — I’ve spent the good portion of the last 3 years putting together a startup law book, when I wasn’t doing my venture lawyer day job or the more important family job (nah it’s not really a job but you know what I mean).
This startup law book isn’t really meant to compete with any books out there, and frankly it likely best complements some of the other really good books out there like “Venture Deals”.
What The Startup Law Book Is
You could think of The Startup Law Book as a premium, expanded version of this blog. That was the initial goal when I started writing it. But as I kept going, it evolved into something more useful: a chronological guide to the legal journey most startups actually take, with a lot of new material and practical context that is hard to fit into standalone blog posts.
It brings together the questions I hear most often from founders, the pitfalls that show up repeatedly, and the lessons that come from seeing both great outcomes and painful ones across roughly 1,000 client matters over the past decade-plus.
The book is designed to walk you through the path from incorporation to early operations and then into seed and venture financings. It covers co-founders, employees, advisors, accelerators, cap tables, fundraising dynamics, and more, written in the same conversational “fireside chat” style as the blog. Think of it as the version of this material you would get if we were talking through it in real time while watching a San Francisco Giants double-header at Oracle Park.
Who it’s for: founders and early startup teams who want plain-English guidance on common legal issues, and who prefer a practical roadmap over scattered articles. It is also useful for operators who touch equity and fundraising (for example, CFOs, COOs, and heads of people) and want to understand the why behind the documents.
What’s different from the blog: the book is organized as a start-to-finish narrative, with expanded explanations, additional examples, and anonymous client anecdotes that illustrate how these issues play out in real life. That structure makes it easier to see how early decisions (like founder equity splits or option pool planning) can affect later fundraising terms.
How to use it: you can read it cover to cover, but many people use it as a reference. When a new issue pops up, for example, a co-founder disagreement, a first hire, an advisor grant, or a term sheet, you can jump to the relevant chapter and get oriented quickly before you talk to counsel.
If you want a single resource that reflects the issues startups repeatedly run into, and that explains the tradeoffs in a founder-friendly way, the book was written for you.
What’s in “Acceleration” (Table of Contents)
If the easiest way to see whether the book is relevant to your situation is to skim the chapter list first, here is the table of contents for the 332-page Startup Law Book:
I hope you like it! If not, maybe you’ll like the 2nd edition. 🙂
Ryan RobertsStartup Lawyer
Ryan Roberts is a startup lawyer at Roberts Zimmerman PLLC with more than two decades of experience advising startups and venture capital investors. He is the author of “Acceleration” and StartupLawyer.com.
