Law Commons^™

Corporate Venture Capital, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article makes the case for corporate venture capital as a potentially game-changing entrant into entrepreneurial finance. Part II begins by retracing the ancillary players in entrepreneurial finance and their roles in the startup ecosystem. After finding each of them incapable of denting the venture capitalist’s current dominance, Part III introduces the large corporation as venture capitalist. Part III discusses the growing scale of corporate venture capital and why it may be desirable for startups, innovation, and society as a whole. Part IV looks at legal differences that may become important for corporate venture capitalists to consider, including securities, antitrust, …

Smart Contracts And The Limits Of Computerized Commerce, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Smart contracts and cryptocurrencies have sparked considerable interest among legal scholars in recent years, and a growing body of scholarship focuses on whether smart contracts and cryptocurrencies can sidestep law and regulation altogether. Bitcoin is famously decentralized, without any central actor controlling the system. Its users remain largely anonymous, using alphanumeric addresses instead of legal names. Ethereum shares these traits and also supports smart contracts that can automate the transfer of the Ethereum cryptocurrency (known as ether). Ethereum also supports specialized "tokens" that can be tied to the ownership of assets, goods, and services that exist completely outside of the …

Public Or Private Venture Capital?, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

The United States has an unparalled entrepreneurial ecosystem. Silicon Valley startups commercialize cutting-edge science, create plentiful jobs, and spur economic growth. Without angel investors and venture capital funds (VCs) willing to gamble on these high-risk, high-tech companies, none of this would be possible.

From a law-and-economics perspective, startup investing is incredibly risky. Information asymmetry and agency costs abound. In the United States, angels and VCs successfully mitigate these problems through private ordering and informal means. Countries without the robust private venture capital system that exists in the United States have attempted to fund startups publicly by creating junior stock exchanges …

How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Bitcoin replicates many of the formal aspects of real estate transactions. Bitcoin transactions have features that closely resemble grantor names, grantee names, legal descriptions, and signatures found in real property deeds. While these “Bitcoin deeds” may be interesting, they are not profound. Bitcoin goes beyond creating simple digital deeds, however, and replicates important institutional aspects of real estate transactions, in particular recordation and title assurance. Deeds to real property are recorded in a central repository (e.g., the public records office), which the parties (and the public) can search to determine title. When one grantor executes more than one deed covering …

Public Or Private Venture Capital?, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Crowdfunding Signals, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Entrepreneurs can now “crowdfund,” or sell securities to unaccredited investors over the Internet, to raise capital. But will these companies be able to attract the follow-on investors (angels and venture capitalists) that are necessary for long-term success? Angels and VCs face extreme levels of information asymmetry when deciding whether to fund a company. Signals can reduce this asymmetry. Early commentary argues a company only crowdfunds as a last resort for fear of sending a negative signal about the company’s quality to follow-on investors. This Article argues the inverse. This Article argues a successful crowdfunding campaign can send a positive signal …

Crowdfunding Signals, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Crowdfunding Without The Crowd, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

The final crowdfunding rules took three years for the Securites and Exchange Commission to pass, but crowdfunding—the offering of securities over the Internet—is now a reality. But now that crowdfunding is legal, will it be successful? Will crowdfunding be a regular means by which new companies raise money, or will it be relegated to a wasteland of the worst startups and foolish investors? This Article argues that crowdfunding has a greater chance of success if regulators abandon the idea that the practice does (and should) employ “crowd-based wisdom.” Instead, I argue that crowdfunding needs intermediation by experts that mirrors the …

Intrapreneurship, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article on “intrapreneurship” has several goals. First, it points out that while much of the legal literature on innovation is concerned with startups (entrepreneurship), the innovation that takes place inside our largest corporations (intrapreneurship) is substantial, important, and understudied. Second, the Article observes that while large technology corporations that used to be startups may remain intrapreneurial in culture, intrapreneurship is less common in the aggregate than we might expect. Reasons include organizational bureaucracy, laws favoring entrepreneurship, and what Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School) calls “the innovator’s dilemma.” The innovator’s dilemma is, put simply, that good management causes large corporations …

Crowdfunding Without The Crowd, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Equity Crowdfunding: A Market For Lemons?, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

International Tax Considerations: Inbound & Outbound (Slides), Seth Green

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

International Tax Considerations: Inbound & Outbound, Seth Green, Monica Zubler

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

From The Fuggers To Justice Ginsburg, Nathan B. Oman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Scouting For Approval: Lessons On Medical Device Regulation In An Era Of Crowdfunding From Scanadu’S “Scout”, Colleen Smith

Student Award Winning Papers

This Article will argue that medical device companies should be able to utilize crowdfunding to raise the necessary capital to develop a product. However, because of the risks medical devices pose, any solution that allows medical device companies to employ crowdfunding should ensure the continuing commitment to consumer safety that is at the core of FDA regulation. This Article uses the Scanadu Scout as an example and a staring point for evaluating the use of crowdfunding in the medical device industry. This Article explains how and why Scanadu broke the law when it moved the Scout, an “adulterated or misbranded” …

Advising Venture & Early-Stage Client: Issues Confronting Early-Stage Companies, Carroll D. Hurst

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

The Uneasy Case For Deferring Banker Pay, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Extending The Taxation-Of-Risk Model To Timing Options And Marked-To-Market Taxes, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The New Exit In Venture Capital, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Debt As Venture Capital, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Venture debt, or loans to rapid-growth start-ups, is a puzzle. How are start-ups with no track records, positive cash flows, tangible collateral, or personal guarantees from entrepreneurs able to attract billions of dollars in loans each year? And why do start-ups take on debt rather than rely exclusively on equity investments from angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs), as well-known capital structure theories from corporate finance would seem to predict in this context? Using hand-collected interview data and theoretical contributions from finance, economics, and law, this Article solves the puzzle of venture debt by revealing that a start-up’s VC backing …

The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior Of Angel Investors, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Carrying A Good Joke Too Far, Peter A. Alces, Jason M. Hopkins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Credit Markets, Exemptions, And Households With Nothing To Exempt, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

American bankruptcy law has offered a "fresh start" in every state for over one hundred years. As a result, econometric studies of consumer bankruptcy often focus on one of the few aspects of the law that has varied significantly across time and across states: exemptions. Professors Gropp, Scholz and White published the first article to test the effect of exemptions on credit markets. Consistent with theory, they found that residents of states with larger exemptions pay higher interest rates than those in states with lower exemptions andface an increased probability that they will be denied credit. These effects were most …

Bankruptcy And State Collections: The Case Of The Missing Garnishments, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

Recent bankruptcy reforms were spurred in part by a bankruptcy filing rate that has more than doubled in the last ten years and that has risen by approximately six hundred percent over the last generation. Some attribute this surge in filings to Americans' greater willingness to avoid debts by declaring bankruptcy. Most academics, however, argue that more Americans are forced into bankruptcy by crushing debt burdens and aggressive collections techniques. Surprisingly, the literature has largely ignored data on the use of these collections techniques. This Article examines the use of one of the most important collections tools, garnishment, in two …

Bankruptcy And Mortgage Lending: The Homeowner Dilemma, A. Mechele Dickerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Why (Consumer) Bankruptcy?, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Politically Viable Approach To Sovereign Debt Restructuring, A. Mechele Dickerson

Faculty Publications

The failure to enact a statutory system to restructure sovereign debt suggests that the international community is still unwilling to adopt a unified global response to insolvency issues. Since nations refused to enact uniform legislation to facilitate more orderly business insolvencies within a sovereign, it is not surprising that recent attempts to create uniform legislation that addresses the insolvency of sovereigns themselves have been unsuccessful. While a comprehensive statutory approach can predictably and efficiently restructure all of a sovereign's debts, the failed experience with uniform cross-border insolvency legislation suggests that sovereigns will not accept an inflexible statutory scheme that contains …

Overoptimism And Overborrowing, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law And Economics Of Consumer Finance, Richard M. Hynes, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Optimal Bankruptcy In A Non-Optimal World, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

Consumer bankruptcy insures individuals against misfortune. Like other forms of insurance, bankruptcy reduces an individual's incentive to guard against misfortune and provides her with an incentive to overstate her need for relief. The "first-best," or optimal, bankruptcy system, like the first-best tax or public assistance system, solves these moral hazards without any loss of efficiency. In bankruptcy, this first-best approach would deny relief to debtors responsible for their own distress and reduce the deserving debtors' obligations to an amount commensurate with their ability to pay. While the Bankruptcy Code tries (in part) to follow this first-best approach, such a utopian …