Build for Breakpoint: Legal Prep for Founders with Gunnercooke

Legal Prep for Founders: Getting Your Product Ready

Most founders treat legal as something to sort out later. The problem is that the expensive mistakes are made early and quietly: IP that sits with a contractor instead of the company, terms copied from another site, user data collected before anyone asked what the lawful basis was.

This session covers what it takes to get a tech product ready from the legal side: who owns the code, brand and model; what data you're collecting and on what basis; which compliance obligations bite before launch rather than after; and the gap between what your terms say and what your product actually does. Bring your product as it stands: what it does, who touches the data, who built what. Come with the awkward questions rather than the tidy version.

Why it matters, and why now.

None of this makes a product better, and all of it makes a company fundable. Diligence is where unowned IP and missing agreements surface, and they surface when a term sheet is on the table and you have no leverage.

Your host: James Burnie FRSA, gunnercooke.

Partner at gunnercooke, ranked Band 1 for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in Chambers FinTech and a Leading Partner for FinTech Regulatory in Legal 500. He's been in crypto since the first successful UK-based ICO and the first equity issuance settled on-chain, and has acted for over 300 Web3 companies — work that includes helping draft around 3% of the world's cryptoasset regulation and advising regulators including the Mauritius FSC and Kazakhstan's AFSA. He's given evidence to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain and Cryptoassets, advises the Law Commission's DAO panel, and hosts the Crypto Cast podcast. He's seen this go wrong across hundreds of companies, and his current focus is helping firms get to market inside the new regulatory regimes