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Full-Text Articles in Law

Intrapreneurship, Darian M. Ibrahim Dec 2016

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 Nov 2016

Crowdfunding Without The Crowd, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.


Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg May 2016

Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (“JOBS Act”) of 2012 into law to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number at least 170. …


Regulatory Entrepreneurship, Jordan M. Barry, Elizabeth Pollman Mar 2016

Regulatory Entrepreneurship, Jordan M. Barry, Elizabeth Pollman

Faculty Scholarship

Numerous corporations, ranging from Airbnb to Tesla, and from DraftKings to Uber, have built huge businesses that reside in legal gray areas. Instead of taking the law as a given, these companies have become agents of legal change, focusing major parts of their business plans on changing the law. To achieve their political goals, these companies employ conventional lobbying techniques, but also more innovative tactics. In particular, some attempt to enter markets quickly, then grow too big to ban before regulators can respond. If regulators do take aim at them, they respond by mobilizing their users for political support. This …


A Place Of Their Own Crowds In The New Market For Equit Crowdfunding, Seth C. Oranburg Jan 2016

A Place Of Their Own Crowds In The New Market For Equit Crowdfunding, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Is small better than large? When it comes to normative business law policy, many seem to think so. Many scholars attribute the 2007–08 financial crisis to mis-regulation of large banks. Many others attribute the subsequent economic recovery to jobs created by small businesses. While the “99%” protested big banks on Wall Street, the “Startup America” grassroots campaign for small business garnered political support for corporate-finance legislation. Within a two-year period, Congress passed the JOBS Act—which tripled private company shareholder limits, authorized federal equity crowdfunding, and created the “mini-IPO” Regulation A+— and the Dodd-Frank Act—which seeks to end “too big …


Startups And Unmet Legal Needs, Alice Armitage, Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams, Robin Feldman Jan 2016

Startups And Unmet Legal Needs, Alice Armitage, Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams, Robin Feldman

Utah Law Review

Our survey results demonstrate that startup companies are exposed to a wide variety of legal needs from an early stage: when attorneys associated with the Startup Legal Garage were asked to handle a company’s most pressing legal needs, the average startup received assistance with over three distinct legal matters over the course of a thirteen-week academic semester. These issues often spanned multiple categories. Although matters frequently touched on a variety of topics within companies, strong similarities emerged in the types of issues faced by all startups in our sample. Almost 90% of the legal matters addressed by Startup Legal Garage …


Protecting Products Versus Platforms, Jacob S. Sherkow Jan 2016

Protecting Products Versus Platforms, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Patents have long been the most important legal assets of biotech companies. Increasingly, however, biotech firms find themselves on one side of a divide: as either traditional product companies or platform companies. Given the differences between these two types of business models, the merits of intellectual property (IP) protection vary between them. This article explores how those differences relate to biotech startups and entrepreneurs seeking to protect their inventions.


Investment Accelerators, Brad Bernthal Jan 2016

Investment Accelerators, Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article documents and explains the legal and extralegal dimensions of Investment Accelerator (IA) systems. Accelerators are a new class of institution that supports entrepreneurs and early stage startups. Investment Accelerators take an ownership stake in companies that participate in an intensive, time-limited program. Interviews reveal the surprising extent to which parties in many Investment Accelerators exchange economic value in the absence of formal agreement. Startups share proprietary information with highly accomplished mentors who, in turn, contribute their time and connections without direct compensation. This under-contracted and informal arrangement raises concerns about opportunism. Data from an original investigation presents a …