Hire a really good lawyer who knows the ropes. In our last post, we covered dividing up the responsibility for work and success. This time, let’s talk about a crucial team member: your lawyer.

Seriously. I know it sounds like a pitch, but I am sincere. Of course we hope that you will hire North Carolina corporate attorneys and Virginia business lawyers from Sands Anderson, but even if you don’t, make sure that you find an attorney who has experience in these matters. I can give you several good reasons.

First, if your business is worth investing in, then you probably have your hands full – or you are excess baggage. You should either be closing your next sale, getting your next-generation prototype to work, or hiring a replacement for the engineer who left suddenly, leaving a critical project is completed. You need to delegate.

If you’re capable of getting a venture capitalist interested enough to give you a term sheet, you’re probably bright enough to learn all the ins and outs of VC financing structure. But that doesn’t mean that you should. As we discussed in Point Number 8, the VC capital structure model, while elaborate, really doesn’t change much from deal to deal. The parameters may change, e.g. the pricing, compensation levels, vesting schedules, liquidation preference factor, etc., but the essential structure of the deal follows a tried and true path. If you really want to reinvent the venture capital business model, you’ll have a lot more luck after you have successfully IPO’d your company. Until then, you will be wasting your time trying to reinvent a wheel that’s already round enough.