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The Legals First Time Founders Need To Know When Fundraising

Rajiv Samani

Joelson

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The Legals First Time Founders Need To Know When Fundraising

Rajiv Samani

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Joelson

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Rajiv Samani
Full transcript here

About Rajiv Samani

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Episode 119: In LAB #21, Amardeep Parmar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amardeepsparmar) from The BAE HQ https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-bae-hq), welcomes Rajiv Samani, Corporate Solicitor at Joelson

In this episode Rajiv Samani, a corporate solicitor from Joelson, discusses the essentials for founders preparing for their first funding round. They emphasise the importance of having a well-organised cap table and statutory registers for attracting investments and simplifying due diligence. Rajiv also covers the intricacies of term sheets, share classes, negotiation power with investors, valuation challenges, and the benefits of legal advice in avoiding common startup pitfalls.

Message from our headline partners:From the first time founders to the funds that back them, innovation needs different. HSBC Innovation Banking is proud to accelerate growth for tech and life science businesses, creating meaningful connections and opening up a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Discover more at https://www.hsbcinnovationbanking.com/

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Show Notes:

00:00 - Intro 

01:00: Detailed advice on preparing for seed and institutional investments, including statutory registers.

02:35: Handling informal family investments and the importance of documentation.

04:08: Explanation of term sheets and their significance in investment negotiations.

07:34: Discussion on different share classes and their implications for investors and founders.

08:54: Encouragement for founders to negotiate with investors and dispel fears of overstepping boundaries.

11:18: The importance of founders showing initiative in negotiations as a positive signal to investors.

12:14: Guidance on handling startup valuations and the importance of investor consensus.

13:35: Discussion on the role of HSBC Innovation Banking in supporting startups.

14:33: Different types of investments and the legal nuances associated with each.

16:18: The potential pitfalls of DIY legal work in early-stage fundraising.

18:27: Detailed advice on avoiding common mistakes in startup legal structures and investment terms.

25:37: Rapid-fire questions highlighting influential British Asian entrepreneurs, how to connect with Rajiv, the importance of B Corp certification, and closing remarks thanking the hosts and partners.

Rajiv Samani: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajiv-samani-124a58100/

Joelson 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/joelson-law/

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Show Notes

Headline partner message

From the first time founders to the funds that back them, innovation needs different. HSBC Innovation Banking is proud to accelerate growth for tech and life science businesses, creating meaningful connections and opening up a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Discover more at https://www.hsbcinnovationbanking.com/

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Rajiv Samani Full Transcript

Rajiv Samani: 0:00

One of the first things I think that's really important for companies and founders to have in place is their cap table.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:10

Helping us today we have Rajiv Samani, who's a corporate solicitor at Joelson. They're a founder-centric legal firm that helped many of the people within our network. They're exclusive legal partners and we can't thank them enough for backing us. We're the BAE HQ and I'm Amar, and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. I hope you enjoy. So, Rajiv, really great to have you on today. We've obviously been quite good friends, been able to chat with you quite a lot, and I know there's something you're really passionate about. So let's dive into the beginning. So a lot of people try to raise their first round who obviously don't have a clue what they're doing right, and they might go to different platforms where it can make some of this easier, but they don't really understand what's going on. So, in your opinion, professionally, what should people be thinking about before they start doing their first raise? It's like what do they need to have in order?

Rajiv Samani: 1:03

That's a really good question and a great place to start. So thanks, Amar. One of the first things I think that's really important for companies and founders to have in place is their cap table. It's a starting point. Really. Investors will really want to make sure that the way things are currently set especially if you've taken on family and friends investment and you're looking at your first seed raise, pre-seed raise or even looking at institutional investment that you've got everything in order. What you say has happened in the past has happened and it's easy for them to see what will happen sort of pre their money coming in and what will happen after their money in terms of their equity rights, whether there are any share options in place. I think a good cap table can really work well for a company going forwards, and it's something that if you have that in place early on, it'll help your company be very succinct and to the point. From an investor point of view, it'll attract less diligence, which will incur less cost and less thinking time at your end if you have it earlier on in place. So that's really important. Another thing that we suggest from a legal perspective is to have your what's called statutory registers in place. So, simply put, these are your company books that should be held by yourself or your accountants, for example, whether that be what's called your register of members so who's a shareholder in a company currently, whether it's yourself and your co-founder only, or any, as I said, family or friends, investment, or register of directors so who's a director of the company and you can tie this in quite nicely with any employees of the company as well and have that all in one place. These are all things, from our point of view, that founders should have in place so any investors, when coming in, can see everything in one place and show that your house is in good order.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:35

So one thing that happened right was when especially I think about Asian tribe often it will be family members or their uncle or whatever it is has given them bit of money to help start it off. If it's been that quite informal where it's just been, oh here's just gonna give me a bit of money to start off, how do you go about that formalization process? Is it something in which people can do by themselves, or is it something which they really need outside help to do properly?

Rajiv Samani: 3:02

That's a question that I get quite commonly, because what you'll find is that to yourself you think okay, it's just my uncle giving me a bit of money, I don't need to document this or put this on paper. But you have to always think with a view to you're gonna sell your business for 500 million pound in 10 years time. Does everything that you said stack up in terms of paper? Remember, a buyer or an investor won't necessarily know that that's the relationship you have with that individual at the time. Things can change over time so we don't think at that point. Say, for example, there your uncle's giving you 10K. You don't need to engage a solicitor to put together a loan agreement per se. But having it documented, having it written down in the form of a board minute, a simple board minute, to say on this day I was given this, there's no interest, things that are important to the future, and if it has been repaid, and making it clear, if you have an accountant or someone who advises you in that sense, sort of knowing that everything is as you say, you need some evidence. So it hasn't got to necessarily be okay, we've engaged solicitors to get together a loan agreement to show that this is what's happened. Obviously, that doesn't necessarily be proportionate to the amount of money put in or the relationship, but it's important to have something written down in some way for the DD process for any investor going forward.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:08

So obviously there's a horror stories of where somebody's come back five years later and be like, oh, I own 10% of the company and because that's been properly documented, then all those problems come up about right. But if you dive a bit deeper into some of this documentation so a lot of people have heard of the term sheet, right, and when you first start to look for investors, that's where you really start to hear about term sheets. But for most of us we've never heard about that that the entire life beforehand. And now all you just know is the term sheet is really important, but you don't really know what to do about it or what exactly it is. So explain to us, like we're five years old, what is a term sheet? What is enough to be of a term sheet?

Rajiv Samani: 4:47

So first things first. So the first confusing thing is there are different words of ways of describing it, and so you often see heads of terms term sheet. So they're fundamentally the same thing. The way I would describe it very simply is that when you're a founder, you often have your pitch deck right and that's what you give to investors and say this is the commercial reason why you should invest into my company my baby, essentially. But what a term sheet does is that sort of actually the financial proposition and what rights they get as being an investor and also what rights you maintain as a founder or the other shareholders maintain. So, going into the anatomy of a term sheet, it covers some stuff as simple as for the investor coming in. What information rights do they get? Do they get a position on the board? Are they simply someone who gets to observe and see what's going on, or do they have an active role? What class of share do they get? Are they the same as all existing shareholders? Do they get extra rights? When it comes to a sale, where would their shares rank if there was less money than you'd hope in the business Stuff like if you were looking at a sale down the line? What percentage of shareholders is needed to bring that sale to fruition. Are they part of that and what? Often one thing that we see emotionally negotiated and it's important to go into detail in the term sheet is to do with what's called consent matters. So does that investor when they're coming in? Is their consent needed for any particular matters that the company is going to do in the future? For example, stuff we commonly see is entering into commercial contracts above a set value, hiring a senior executive, issuing new shares. That's the one then I'll come back to that going forward that having a blocker on issuing new shares or needing an investor's consent to issuing new shares is a real red flag for a founder. Because, while I'm now going to something else called preemption rights, which is the ability to match and be involved in a future investment round as an existing shareholder, that's very market for investors and we'd accept that to be the case for most investments, but what you don't want is to have to ask a new investor's consent every time you want to raise money. We want to stop things ever being a blocker for you as a founder, even simple stuff like setting out this is the existing cap table, this is the existing shareholding. This is what happens right now, before your investment. This is a situation with equity. After your investment, a term sheet will also deal with what's called lever provisions. Right now, obviously, as a founder or co-founder, as you're all employed with the company, everything's all great. There might be a situation where someone leaves. Do they retain their shareholding? What defines a different kind of lever situation? There are so many different provisions and, going back to the first point you made, if you're given a term sheet, you're on a bit more of a back foot because you're not actually in control of what's put together there, whereas if you can present a term sheet alongside your pitch deck, for example, you're saying this is the commercial proposition and this is the financial proposition. Take both together and see what you think about the business. It's really interesting there.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:34

from the outside, I always wondered why do people get different types of shares in the first place? What's the reasoning behind why you would be even willing to consider that at all? From the outside, I just think everyone shares in the same. Obviously that's not the case for reality.

Rajiv Samani: 7:51

That's a good question. I think it's actually sometimes not looked at in enough detail because it's always to do with a future event. Sometimes shares are given to different investors because some shares have dividend rights, some shares have voting rights, but when everyone gets a vote, it's often the case where shares are of different classes because of what's called a liquidation preference. In the event of an insolvency, there is a priority order in which money is paid back to different share classes. So often what you'll see is you'll see that this share is at the top of a liquidation preference. You often see institutional investors, vc's, ask for a share classes at the top, above everything else, because if they're envisioning that the investment has an element of risk to it, they want to be receiving their money back first, before everyone else, as well as dividends and other voting rights and stuff like that. So that's the reason behind there being different share classes.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:40

So how much power does the founder have to negotiate with these kinds of groups? Because often I know many founders are quite scared to negotiate with a VC or an institutional investor because they feel like they're the small fish and the VC has got so much power.

Rajiv Samani: 8:54

So that's something that we commonly see and it's something that we do try to fight back, because, as a very founder led firm and someone who fights for the key important things for founders, when we're onboarding a new client or having a first discussion, we often hear from founders things along the lines of well, we want to fight for the important things, but we don't want to upset the investor or we're worried that if we fight for too much, they'll walk away. So we don't want to dispel that myth because, while we don't fight for the nitty-gritty, pedantic legal points, you have to understand that every investment we're interviewing, in fact, more commonly, that they're expecting negotiation and that they will have a baseline, bottom point where there will be things that they won't accept a pushback on. But there's a lot of things that have leniency and often investors and lawyers who act for investors will have a very blanket approach, not very tailored to the business that they're actually investing in, and say these are the list of things that we require consent of things that might not even be applicable with regard to properties or contracts that aren't in place, or data protection, things that might not even be relevant. But it's just a very blanket approach. So we want to make sure that what's actually there and what's in the term sheet is actually specific for the business and things that you can actually act on. We see cases where there are various conditions to completion. So things that a founder has to do before whether it's various insurances in place a DNA insurance, key man insurance these are things that aren't too tricky to obtain but they might not be relevant to a particular business. So it's just something that can you actually do, what you're being asked to do, and is it something where you feel that there's actually a more middle ground, often to do with time scales and making sure things are in place by a certain time. So we often really do fight for a founder and get them to realize that there are things you can push back on. Just because you push back doesn't mean the investment will fall away. It's all part of a negotiation and it's important to understand these concepts because some of them are quite tricky and some of them are lots of detail in the draft and they need to understand that actually work. So, again, another reason why it's important to engage lawyers when you're definitely negotiating with institutional investors who are very, very OFA with the key provisions that are quite technical.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:56

So it's interesting as well. I think if you're investing in somebody but in some ways you expect them to take a crappy deal, that goes counter to you investing it right. As in, if somebody is showing that they're taking the initiative, they're looking at the points, they're looking at the different details of that contract, I'd say it's actually a good sign to an investor, because you want to invest in kind of person who does that right.

Rajiv Samani: 11:18

That's definitely along the lines of I'd echo that as someone who looks at investing themselves or generally, if you know people who do invest, you almost don't expect the process to be smooth because you want there to be some level of negotiation. As you said, in the future they're going to be doing the same process with another investor, so totally agree with you. Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:35

If you can walk over them, then it's like other investors will also walk over them, which is a bad view. And another point that I know that's really sticky for so many people and they're really struggling with is that valuation aspect right when they're asking investors for the first institutional round. How do you price something? Because some of these companies won't even have revenue yet, so you can't do a price like a revenue multiplier. And of others they'll think, oh, we're going to get 100 million revenue in two years, so we're going to put our price at 150 million valuation, but we've got two customers. And how do you advise people on that? Because I'm guessing lots of your customers will also come to you for that.

Rajiv Samani: 12:14

Definitely so. We get a lot of questions about valuation and, in particular, do you think we've got a fair valuation here? Do you think we should be lowered? And, to be honest, we're not able to properly advise on that. But we can take a commercial view and say, to be honest, an investment that's coming in, if you have a number of smart angel investors or individual investors who know what they're doing, if they're all happy to invest at the current price, that means your valuation is pretty spot on. There is no sweet science to, especially for an early stage business, because, as you said, there's not historical years of revenue or contracts in place. Often you are investing in the individual and the idea and it's and what one thing we say from it from a legal perspective, it's important is that you almost you don't want to pitch your valuation too high and everyone is conscious of giving away too much equity in the business and that does often affect the valuation and the threshold that's given. But what you don't want to do is set yourself a really high valuation and then say you need more money in six months time and you're planning another investment round. Then having to invest and receive investment on a lower price. That's what's called a down round, and again, it's all with a long-term view. You don't want to set your sites too high. You want to be positive and obviously have reasoning behind that. But there is no science, there's not always a like metrics that can suggest what the right valuation is. But we'd always take the approach of saying that if you've got a number of investors, they're all happy with the price. You're pretty pretty much there.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:35

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, hpc Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You were just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what is you've been trying to do. Hpc have got the team they're built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hbcinnovationbankingcom. So we touched on this earlier as well and you said by different types of investors. If your angel is all on board, then the valuation is probably decent, but how do you think about even dealing with different types of investors? So it was VCs crowdfunding your make down the pub. How do you do with the legal situation? There's different environments. Can you use a one-size-fits-all approach or does it have to be?

Rajiv Samani: 14:33

tailored. There are different forms of legal documentation that can mean that you can often take investment at one date and then fix the price down the line. These are called ASAs advanced subscription agreements. So that's definitely something that we we'd advise and we do a lot of work in that space helping founders who aren't 100% cranky on their investment price and, to be honest, what they want to do is get the money they're securely in right now to help the business grow, and then there might be a 2x price in six months time and then for investors, they're given the benefit of a discount for taking that risk and investing early, but before there's a price at hand. But the one thing you want to be careful and it's almost a dragon's den style situation where you say your uncle came in and he gave you 10k and you said, oh, thanks so much, uncle, for that I'll give you 25% of my business. So in theory, you're rallying your business there at 40k, but then you then stick with the line. Your business is doing really well and someone comes in and they're giving you a quarter of a million pound and you're saying we'll give you 5% and they're saying how can they be this at this stage and this at this stage. So you have to be very careful with the early stage giving out equity because you need a bit of money earlier on you have. There are very different ways to go about and to make sure. As I said. Going back to the first one, we discussed what's important to get in order your your cap tip. But if you can look at your cap table clearly and say this is how much this business has got for this amount of equity, you can see that you don't want to dilate yourself too much. So it's important to take a quite fairly uniform approach and to make sure that you're not giving someone, for the sake of family and friends or someone because there's a good will involved, a better, a better price one actually and invest who's institutional and knows the market well won't accept that on the basis of you just did it at the time because it was for a friend or something like that. And, as you said, that's that kind of friends and family situation that you often see as the first raise it's important to follow as legally formal approach as possible.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:18

You mentioned ASAs, then I've done a couple of investments myself with the ASAs, but I assume a lot of people in the first start to raise they don't even know what that is. So you might a traditional model. You think, okay, people do their soft commitments, you get to the amount you said, and now everybody you soft committed, you then collect that money right. But that's not the way it always works. And ASAs, you said you get the money in advance. Could you go into a bit more detail about what exactly happens there and whether or not it's a good idea to do ASAs, or if it's actually legally maybe something that's more complicated that you should be careful ?

Rajiv Samani: 16:51

it's it's different. So if we go back to the first point about a term sheet, if you were doing a simple equity fundraise where you've got an investment agreement, which is the long form document behind a fundraise, you'd have a term sheet going through a lot of these points. If you were to go down a different route where, like an ASA, which is something where it's more what's called like a convertible loaner is another example, it's documents where you're you're getting money into the company but you aren't giving shares straight away, so it's the price, is the future and what's happening is essentially a loan that a future investors putting in for shares and future, but that the money and right now and there are lots of benefits to this because, as you say, you don't necessarily what the price is going to be right now, but also it ties down to future events the company is essentially Investors taking even more of a punts and realizing this is a risky investment, but we want to help the founder grow and we're happy to realize our equity in the future. So, going into the more detailed about ASAs, there are often a number of events that what's called conversion events or trigger events which make sort of the equity turn live, whether that's particular day, say we went into a, today you might say the longstop date or conversion date is two years to this day or earlier. For example, if there isn't another equity fundraising, another fundraise of, say, a certain threshold, say a million pound, then the your shares will become live at that point. Or if there is a sale of a certain amount of the company, your shares then become part of that sale. So it's quite a neat document, especially when you don't know what price exactly want to fix your, your, your, your valuation. That it means you can essentially bank money that you currently have and essentially take on loans from investors who are happy to realize that the equity in the future.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:27

So before going to quick fire questions. I know that you see a lot of situations of where people try to find the legal stuff themselves in the early days. Maybe they can get through their first fundraise, doing it in a patchwork way. What the biggest mistakes you see there? That something you have to come in later fix and you just wish that people listen right now didn't make those mistakes. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people make that hopefully you can save them from from the members into this episode?

Rajiv Samani: 18:55

So firstly, I mean we, as as a law firm which acts with a lot of founders and we start with the founders who are taking on even very small amounts of investment we sympathize with the fact that obviously, engaging with the law firm does cost money that's, the money now compared to the value of the investment is not always the most practical or efficient thing to engage solicitors, but there was obviously a huge benefit, and the way I describe it is that you're going to have to do more work in the future if you don't engage legal advisors early, and by doing that it just makes makes sure that your house is in order. So we often see founders use other document generation platforms to help them produce a suite of legal documents that can send off to investors and, to be honest, that's really good and it almost is the best solution for really early stage businesses who are just looking to have documents in place. When it comes to negotiating with institutional investors, you need to have more robust suite of documents that actually cover your interest. We've seen issues in the past where it's not always to do with equity necessarily and to do with giving up an amount of equity, but it's to do with consent rights and to do with things that actually, as a founder, you didn't realize, you're actually signing up to needing a investors consent every time you want to raise money, every time you want to hire a new employee, every time you want to get rid of someone in the company at all, no matter what their threshold of salary is or how important they are to the business, whenever you want to take on any debt, whether that even be a short, short intercompany loan or give, give money back into the company. So there are so many actions that you think, okay, in practice I wouldn't, I wouldn't need to worry about this. But you have to remember, if an investor is coming in to take 10% of equity in your business, the rights they have over the business and the consent rights they, they should match that 10% and not be sort of almost what you'd expect yourself as a sole founder, to have. So it's little things like that, and I think these points are really important because every time you you build a set of legal documents or a term sheet, if you're looking with a view to the future, you're always going to get investors who are going to look back to the previous term sheet and want to see that, or previous investment, previous long form document, and if there are things that seem to be not in places they should. They're not going to agree to changing that if it's not in their favor. So everything is with a view to the future

Amardeep Parmar: 21:14

Is there anything else you want to bring up, just before we go into quick fire questions that you think you'd love the founders to know?

Rajiv Samani: 21:20

To be honest, I think we've covered quite a lot of points. I think I think one thing and this is just more from my experience and experience of working with some really, really technically gifted lawyers who also are very commercial, there are a few different points that can be quite good tricks and hacks to look at as a as a founder. Often, if you're looking at institutional investors, they'll they'll want to direct you on the board of the company because they want to see all the information that the high and how the company is doing so they can pass on to their, their investment committee etc. But also there are some typically angel investors who aren't too too fussed with that. They might present that as their first option. But often you can get away with, as a founder, of offering what's called a board observer, right, so angels get to see what's going on with with with the director and the company, but they're not actually involved in the voting process, and that can often be because they often have 10, 20, 30, 40 more angel investments. They're not necessarily considering being involved in the management of each of these companies, but they want to just the information that they can sort of see how how their portfolio investments is going. So that's something that's quite important because, remember, if you give someone a director right, they're on the board and in the future, the balance of the control of your board is very important for voting and all these decisions that we refer to. As much as we say, there are matters that require investor consent. There are also matters that require the board's consent, which is pretty much all matters on the company's act. So you want to make sure the balance of a favor is always in favor of the founders and the company over any investors. So that's an important point and I think other things considered is you're always going to look from a legal perspective at things that are at the present right. You're saying I'm an employee of the company as well as a director and a founder and things are great. I don't see myself leaving. This is my baby. I would never leave unless we're selling. But you need to make sure that you're protecting yourself in the future and that there's the thing that we see called good leave or bad leave provisions, and these are some of the most technically tricky areas of drafting when it comes to an investment, and often institutional investors will have pretty strong views about what determines a good leave or a bad leave, and the reason why this is important is because you own your class of shares and you expect to receive money in return for those shares. However, if you're what's deemed to be a bad leave which normally is someone who has done something that is misconduct, or broke their research to covenants et cetera stuff like that or done something that's against the company's act to get disqualified, that's what would be a bad leave and that's how it would be commonly be drafted. If you're acting for a founder, however, what investors often do is they try to define what a good leave is. So what? Someone who's actually left them will receive the reward of all their shares and then say everything else is a bad leave, which is a massive capsule, which is actually quite tricky, because then you're just saying, if you've not done one of these few things, you're not a good leave. Therefore, by virtue, you're a bad leaver, and we see that often. Then you think, just reading it from layman's terms, I'm not going to be a bad leaver, but I'm the founder of this business. I would never be a bad leaver. I never want to leave, but actually what you need to realize is that you need to make it the other way around. You need to say this is what a bad leave is and everything else is a good leave. As long as I don't do that, I'm a good leave. And it all goes down to receiving the rights to your shares in the future. Because if you're a bad leave, then you might have started the business, got all these investors on board, provided all this value, but then you then lose the right of your shares as you leave, as opposed to a good leave who receives the value of their shares. So this is a really tricky area of drafting which we often see. People just tick a box and say, okay, it's not going to affect me. In a term sheet you'd often see standard good leave or standard bad leave of provisions. You should never accept that. If you're a founder, you want to see the detail in a term sheet, because otherwise what will happen is that what we're seeing investors do more and more nowadays is try to align themselves with what's called the BBCA documents. This is the British venture capital association documents. This is a great suite of template documents for for investors and founders and we often see them use as template for drafting long-form documents. However, the caveat to that is they are inherently known in the market as being quite investor friendly. So if you're a founder, you don't want to accept standard BBC a wording around good, leave a badly, because that will include some of the provisions I've said earlier on which aren't in your favor. So with those particular areas that are quite tentative, course, important to take advice, and I think that just understanding the concept is one thing and talking to someone who knows about them, but also when it gets to that stage and there are a couple of institutional investors looking to invest in your company, you do need to take legal advice.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:37

So thanks so much for sharing that. We're going to move into a quick fire questions now. So first one is who are the three British Asians you think are doing incredible work that you love to spotlight and audience should be paying attention to? Definitely. So,

Rajiv Samani: 25:50

umber one, I mean. First of all, this is quite hard because there are a lot of people in in my life who have influenced me, but also people who I think are doing really well now or in the past. But these three, I think, have definitely shown a light in terms of people who I look up to and also who are doing great, great work in the British Asian Entrepreneur Sector. So the first is a a chap all the Carney, who's the CEO of Sanjay foods, and I mean Sanjay foods is a fantastic business generated in Leicester, it's a food not hospitality business and specializing Not just primarily but in some really luxury, top, high-end corporate events, having catered the Downing Street Divali party, for example. But also they do a lot of weddings and have a have a great, a great venue in in in the Coventry, and so that's as a business has come from sort of nowhere to being a family-run restaurant to being a big corporate hospitality business specializing in food catering, and I think they're doing really good things, hiring a lot of staff and and and just generally promoting British Asians. So that's a really good business I want to shout out. Secondly is a chap called, Sailesh Thakrar, who's an entrepreneur, a British Asian entrepreneur, for a company called Dallas Holdings and that they approve franchise partner of, Pret A manje. So they've franchised pret across Europe, across the UK and the Midlands and even further north and south, away from just. They've been a pretty five minutes in London and also recently launching in the US, but it's East side, on West side, so again they've taken that their previous holdings business, which is involved in sort of petrol stations, coffee shops and services and then enabling working with press as a franchise partner, and then they're doing really, really well globally. So we'll have to give them a shout out. And and then a chap called Paresh Pau, who's the CEO of techno world and so no world is a is a leading supplier of laptops and PCs. And again, this is another family run business that started from nothing 20, 25 years ago and it's now a leading supplier in the UK. It's a great story of sort of a business that you don't necessarily think you fall into, but a simple business where you you receive product and you you put it together and you and you retell it out and it can show that Ideas come in all different forms and it's sort of to see someone start from a, from a young agency passing to the family and I. There's three sons and I involved the business as well. It's great to see a family run business and I think that really matches the ethos of British Asian generally looking after your family and also keeping family heritage together. So those are my three shout outs.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:19

Awesome, it was so great. So next one is how can you find out more about? You find out more about Joelson?

Rajiv Samani: 28:24

So if you can find out more about me, I mean I'm all over LinkedIn. I post quite a lot not as much as you, Amar, but I do face a good amount. So my details are all on LinkedIn. I'm happy to have a chat and speak generally. I'm all across Joelson's website as well, but it's generally speaking. You can always drop me a message on LinkedIn, always say let's have a quick chat to discuss this and that. And, Joelson, we're quite big on social media because a lot of our clients started off reaching out to us in these platforms recently and in the past as well. So I'm across social media, my my, my details all over my LinkedIn. So, yeah, feel free to always drop me a message. No question is silly.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:03

Then, is anything that the audience could help you with that you're looking for right now?

Rajiv Samani: 29:07

So I suppose one of the things that's really exciting about Joelson is that we I think last August or September we became B corporate credited, which is that we're ready with the fourth law firm in the UK to become B corporate credit seed, and since then there have been four or five more firms joining in being UK based law firms who are B corporate credit seed, which is exciting and great. Being I mean B accredited. What it what it means is that your your focus, as well as being an entity which drives the profits and is also one that helps the Planet at the same time and it's not either or. So we're really looking to knowledge share and understand from other B Court businesses sort of what they're doing to get even better, how they can look to sort of really help this net carbon environment that we're looking to pursue and generally help us make our processes more ESG friendly. So a lot of our clients are now going on this path, if they're not already. So I'm really personally interested in someone who's involved in that in the company to see who can sort of knowledge share and explain what they're doing to make their company as as B court friendly as possible.

Amardeep Parmar
:

So thanks again. So much from the review. Any final words?

Rajiv Samani:

No, nothing from me. I think it's been great to chat, I think, a shout out of, as you myself and Joelson with it exclusively go partners of BAE. We love working with you guys. I think you don't get enough shout out yourself for all the great work you're doing. These podcasts wouldn't be, it wouldn't be able to happen if it wasn't for the hard work that you put in Amar and Gurvir as well, doing so much stuff in terms of having lots of introductory calls, angel investment discussions, making sure that everyone has heard and has, everyone has had time for each other, and I think the work you guys doing, I think you'd be my full shout out. So, yeah, I think thank you for putting everything like this together and and making all of us have a voice, like like you do.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:55

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

Rajiv Samani: 0:00

One of the first things I think that's really important for companies and founders to have in place is their cap table.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:10

Helping us today we have Rajiv Samani, who's a corporate solicitor at Joelson. They're a founder-centric legal firm that helped many of the people within our network. They're exclusive legal partners and we can't thank them enough for backing us. We're the BAE HQ and I'm Amar, and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. I hope you enjoy. So, Rajiv, really great to have you on today. We've obviously been quite good friends, been able to chat with you quite a lot, and I know there's something you're really passionate about. So let's dive into the beginning. So a lot of people try to raise their first round who obviously don't have a clue what they're doing right, and they might go to different platforms where it can make some of this easier, but they don't really understand what's going on. So, in your opinion, professionally, what should people be thinking about before they start doing their first raise? It's like what do they need to have in order?

Rajiv Samani: 1:03

That's a really good question and a great place to start. So thanks, Amar. One of the first things I think that's really important for companies and founders to have in place is their cap table. It's a starting point. Really. Investors will really want to make sure that the way things are currently set especially if you've taken on family and friends investment and you're looking at your first seed raise, pre-seed raise or even looking at institutional investment that you've got everything in order. What you say has happened in the past has happened and it's easy for them to see what will happen sort of pre their money coming in and what will happen after their money in terms of their equity rights, whether there are any share options in place. I think a good cap table can really work well for a company going forwards, and it's something that if you have that in place early on, it'll help your company be very succinct and to the point. From an investor point of view, it'll attract less diligence, which will incur less cost and less thinking time at your end if you have it earlier on in place. So that's really important. Another thing that we suggest from a legal perspective is to have your what's called statutory registers in place. So, simply put, these are your company books that should be held by yourself or your accountants, for example, whether that be what's called your register of members so who's a shareholder in a company currently, whether it's yourself and your co-founder only, or any, as I said, family or friends, investment, or register of directors so who's a director of the company and you can tie this in quite nicely with any employees of the company as well and have that all in one place. These are all things, from our point of view, that founders should have in place so any investors, when coming in, can see everything in one place and show that your house is in good order.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:35

So one thing that happened right was when especially I think about Asian tribe often it will be family members or their uncle or whatever it is has given them bit of money to help start it off. If it's been that quite informal where it's just been, oh here's just gonna give me a bit of money to start off, how do you go about that formalization process? Is it something in which people can do by themselves, or is it something which they really need outside help to do properly?

Rajiv Samani: 3:02

That's a question that I get quite commonly, because what you'll find is that to yourself you think okay, it's just my uncle giving me a bit of money, I don't need to document this or put this on paper. But you have to always think with a view to you're gonna sell your business for 500 million pound in 10 years time. Does everything that you said stack up in terms of paper? Remember, a buyer or an investor won't necessarily know that that's the relationship you have with that individual at the time. Things can change over time so we don't think at that point. Say, for example, there your uncle's giving you 10K. You don't need to engage a solicitor to put together a loan agreement per se. But having it documented, having it written down in the form of a board minute, a simple board minute, to say on this day I was given this, there's no interest, things that are important to the future, and if it has been repaid, and making it clear, if you have an accountant or someone who advises you in that sense, sort of knowing that everything is as you say, you need some evidence. So it hasn't got to necessarily be okay, we've engaged solicitors to get together a loan agreement to show that this is what's happened. Obviously, that doesn't necessarily be proportionate to the amount of money put in or the relationship, but it's important to have something written down in some way for the DD process for any investor going forward.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:08

So obviously there's a horror stories of where somebody's come back five years later and be like, oh, I own 10% of the company and because that's been properly documented, then all those problems come up about right. But if you dive a bit deeper into some of this documentation so a lot of people have heard of the term sheet, right, and when you first start to look for investors, that's where you really start to hear about term sheets. But for most of us we've never heard about that that the entire life beforehand. And now all you just know is the term sheet is really important, but you don't really know what to do about it or what exactly it is. So explain to us, like we're five years old, what is a term sheet? What is enough to be of a term sheet?

Rajiv Samani: 4:47

So first things first. So the first confusing thing is there are different words of ways of describing it, and so you often see heads of terms term sheet. So they're fundamentally the same thing. The way I would describe it very simply is that when you're a founder, you often have your pitch deck right and that's what you give to investors and say this is the commercial reason why you should invest into my company my baby, essentially. But what a term sheet does is that sort of actually the financial proposition and what rights they get as being an investor and also what rights you maintain as a founder or the other shareholders maintain. So, going into the anatomy of a term sheet, it covers some stuff as simple as for the investor coming in. What information rights do they get? Do they get a position on the board? Are they simply someone who gets to observe and see what's going on, or do they have an active role? What class of share do they get? Are they the same as all existing shareholders? Do they get extra rights? When it comes to a sale, where would their shares rank if there was less money than you'd hope in the business Stuff like if you were looking at a sale down the line? What percentage of shareholders is needed to bring that sale to fruition. Are they part of that and what? Often one thing that we see emotionally negotiated and it's important to go into detail in the term sheet is to do with what's called consent matters. So does that investor when they're coming in? Is their consent needed for any particular matters that the company is going to do in the future? For example, stuff we commonly see is entering into commercial contracts above a set value, hiring a senior executive, issuing new shares. That's the one then I'll come back to that going forward that having a blocker on issuing new shares or needing an investor's consent to issuing new shares is a real red flag for a founder. Because, while I'm now going to something else called preemption rights, which is the ability to match and be involved in a future investment round as an existing shareholder, that's very market for investors and we'd accept that to be the case for most investments, but what you don't want is to have to ask a new investor's consent every time you want to raise money. We want to stop things ever being a blocker for you as a founder, even simple stuff like setting out this is the existing cap table, this is the existing shareholding. This is what happens right now, before your investment. This is a situation with equity. After your investment, a term sheet will also deal with what's called lever provisions. Right now, obviously, as a founder or co-founder, as you're all employed with the company, everything's all great. There might be a situation where someone leaves. Do they retain their shareholding? What defines a different kind of lever situation? There are so many different provisions and, going back to the first point you made, if you're given a term sheet, you're on a bit more of a back foot because you're not actually in control of what's put together there, whereas if you can present a term sheet alongside your pitch deck, for example, you're saying this is the commercial proposition and this is the financial proposition. Take both together and see what you think about the business. It's really interesting there.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:34

from the outside, I always wondered why do people get different types of shares in the first place? What's the reasoning behind why you would be even willing to consider that at all? From the outside, I just think everyone shares in the same. Obviously that's not the case for reality.

Rajiv Samani: 7:51

That's a good question. I think it's actually sometimes not looked at in enough detail because it's always to do with a future event. Sometimes shares are given to different investors because some shares have dividend rights, some shares have voting rights, but when everyone gets a vote, it's often the case where shares are of different classes because of what's called a liquidation preference. In the event of an insolvency, there is a priority order in which money is paid back to different share classes. So often what you'll see is you'll see that this share is at the top of a liquidation preference. You often see institutional investors, vc's, ask for a share classes at the top, above everything else, because if they're envisioning that the investment has an element of risk to it, they want to be receiving their money back first, before everyone else, as well as dividends and other voting rights and stuff like that. So that's the reason behind there being different share classes.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:40

So how much power does the founder have to negotiate with these kinds of groups? Because often I know many founders are quite scared to negotiate with a VC or an institutional investor because they feel like they're the small fish and the VC has got so much power.

Rajiv Samani: 8:54

So that's something that we commonly see and it's something that we do try to fight back, because, as a very founder led firm and someone who fights for the key important things for founders, when we're onboarding a new client or having a first discussion, we often hear from founders things along the lines of well, we want to fight for the important things, but we don't want to upset the investor or we're worried that if we fight for too much, they'll walk away. So we don't want to dispel that myth because, while we don't fight for the nitty-gritty, pedantic legal points, you have to understand that every investment we're interviewing, in fact, more commonly, that they're expecting negotiation and that they will have a baseline, bottom point where there will be things that they won't accept a pushback on. But there's a lot of things that have leniency and often investors and lawyers who act for investors will have a very blanket approach, not very tailored to the business that they're actually investing in, and say these are the list of things that we require consent of things that might not even be applicable with regard to properties or contracts that aren't in place, or data protection, things that might not even be relevant. But it's just a very blanket approach. So we want to make sure that what's actually there and what's in the term sheet is actually specific for the business and things that you can actually act on. We see cases where there are various conditions to completion. So things that a founder has to do before whether it's various insurances in place a DNA insurance, key man insurance these are things that aren't too tricky to obtain but they might not be relevant to a particular business. So it's just something that can you actually do, what you're being asked to do, and is it something where you feel that there's actually a more middle ground, often to do with time scales and making sure things are in place by a certain time. So we often really do fight for a founder and get them to realize that there are things you can push back on. Just because you push back doesn't mean the investment will fall away. It's all part of a negotiation and it's important to understand these concepts because some of them are quite tricky and some of them are lots of detail in the draft and they need to understand that actually work. So, again, another reason why it's important to engage lawyers when you're definitely negotiating with institutional investors who are very, very OFA with the key provisions that are quite technical.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:56

So it's interesting as well. I think if you're investing in somebody but in some ways you expect them to take a crappy deal, that goes counter to you investing it right. As in, if somebody is showing that they're taking the initiative, they're looking at the points, they're looking at the different details of that contract, I'd say it's actually a good sign to an investor, because you want to invest in kind of person who does that right.

Rajiv Samani: 11:18

That's definitely along the lines of I'd echo that as someone who looks at investing themselves or generally, if you know people who do invest, you almost don't expect the process to be smooth because you want there to be some level of negotiation. As you said, in the future they're going to be doing the same process with another investor, so totally agree with you. Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:35

If you can walk over them, then it's like other investors will also walk over them, which is a bad view. And another point that I know that's really sticky for so many people and they're really struggling with is that valuation aspect right when they're asking investors for the first institutional round. How do you price something? Because some of these companies won't even have revenue yet, so you can't do a price like a revenue multiplier. And of others they'll think, oh, we're going to get 100 million revenue in two years, so we're going to put our price at 150 million valuation, but we've got two customers. And how do you advise people on that? Because I'm guessing lots of your customers will also come to you for that.

Rajiv Samani: 12:14

Definitely so. We get a lot of questions about valuation and, in particular, do you think we've got a fair valuation here? Do you think we should be lowered? And, to be honest, we're not able to properly advise on that. But we can take a commercial view and say, to be honest, an investment that's coming in, if you have a number of smart angel investors or individual investors who know what they're doing, if they're all happy to invest at the current price, that means your valuation is pretty spot on. There is no sweet science to, especially for an early stage business, because, as you said, there's not historical years of revenue or contracts in place. Often you are investing in the individual and the idea and it's and what one thing we say from it from a legal perspective, it's important is that you almost you don't want to pitch your valuation too high and everyone is conscious of giving away too much equity in the business and that does often affect the valuation and the threshold that's given. But what you don't want to do is set yourself a really high valuation and then say you need more money in six months time and you're planning another investment round. Then having to invest and receive investment on a lower price. That's what's called a down round, and again, it's all with a long-term view. You don't want to set your sites too high. You want to be positive and obviously have reasoning behind that. But there is no science, there's not always a like metrics that can suggest what the right valuation is. But we'd always take the approach of saying that if you've got a number of investors, they're all happy with the price. You're pretty pretty much there.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:35

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, hpc Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You were just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what is you've been trying to do. Hpc have got the team they're built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hbcinnovationbankingcom. So we touched on this earlier as well and you said by different types of investors. If your angel is all on board, then the valuation is probably decent, but how do you think about even dealing with different types of investors? So it was VCs crowdfunding your make down the pub. How do you do with the legal situation? There's different environments. Can you use a one-size-fits-all approach or does it have to be?

Rajiv Samani: 14:33

tailored. There are different forms of legal documentation that can mean that you can often take investment at one date and then fix the price down the line. These are called ASAs advanced subscription agreements. So that's definitely something that we we'd advise and we do a lot of work in that space helping founders who aren't 100% cranky on their investment price and, to be honest, what they want to do is get the money they're securely in right now to help the business grow, and then there might be a 2x price in six months time and then for investors, they're given the benefit of a discount for taking that risk and investing early, but before there's a price at hand. But the one thing you want to be careful and it's almost a dragon's den style situation where you say your uncle came in and he gave you 10k and you said, oh, thanks so much, uncle, for that I'll give you 25% of my business. So in theory, you're rallying your business there at 40k, but then you then stick with the line. Your business is doing really well and someone comes in and they're giving you a quarter of a million pound and you're saying we'll give you 5% and they're saying how can they be this at this stage and this at this stage. So you have to be very careful with the early stage giving out equity because you need a bit of money earlier on you have. There are very different ways to go about and to make sure. As I said. Going back to the first one, we discussed what's important to get in order your your cap tip. But if you can look at your cap table clearly and say this is how much this business has got for this amount of equity, you can see that you don't want to dilate yourself too much. So it's important to take a quite fairly uniform approach and to make sure that you're not giving someone, for the sake of family and friends or someone because there's a good will involved, a better, a better price one actually and invest who's institutional and knows the market well won't accept that on the basis of you just did it at the time because it was for a friend or something like that. And, as you said, that's that kind of friends and family situation that you often see as the first raise it's important to follow as legally formal approach as possible.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:18

You mentioned ASAs, then I've done a couple of investments myself with the ASAs, but I assume a lot of people in the first start to raise they don't even know what that is. So you might a traditional model. You think, okay, people do their soft commitments, you get to the amount you said, and now everybody you soft committed, you then collect that money right. But that's not the way it always works. And ASAs, you said you get the money in advance. Could you go into a bit more detail about what exactly happens there and whether or not it's a good idea to do ASAs, or if it's actually legally maybe something that's more complicated that you should be careful ?

Rajiv Samani: 16:51

it's it's different. So if we go back to the first point about a term sheet, if you were doing a simple equity fundraise where you've got an investment agreement, which is the long form document behind a fundraise, you'd have a term sheet going through a lot of these points. If you were to go down a different route where, like an ASA, which is something where it's more what's called like a convertible loaner is another example, it's documents where you're you're getting money into the company but you aren't giving shares straight away, so it's the price, is the future and what's happening is essentially a loan that a future investors putting in for shares and future, but that the money and right now and there are lots of benefits to this because, as you say, you don't necessarily what the price is going to be right now, but also it ties down to future events the company is essentially Investors taking even more of a punts and realizing this is a risky investment, but we want to help the founder grow and we're happy to realize our equity in the future. So, going into the more detailed about ASAs, there are often a number of events that what's called conversion events or trigger events which make sort of the equity turn live, whether that's particular day, say we went into a, today you might say the longstop date or conversion date is two years to this day or earlier. For example, if there isn't another equity fundraising, another fundraise of, say, a certain threshold, say a million pound, then the your shares will become live at that point. Or if there is a sale of a certain amount of the company, your shares then become part of that sale. So it's quite a neat document, especially when you don't know what price exactly want to fix your, your, your, your valuation. That it means you can essentially bank money that you currently have and essentially take on loans from investors who are happy to realize that the equity in the future.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:27

So before going to quick fire questions. I know that you see a lot of situations of where people try to find the legal stuff themselves in the early days. Maybe they can get through their first fundraise, doing it in a patchwork way. What the biggest mistakes you see there? That something you have to come in later fix and you just wish that people listen right now didn't make those mistakes. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people make that hopefully you can save them from from the members into this episode?

Rajiv Samani: 18:55

So firstly, I mean we, as as a law firm which acts with a lot of founders and we start with the founders who are taking on even very small amounts of investment we sympathize with the fact that obviously, engaging with the law firm does cost money that's, the money now compared to the value of the investment is not always the most practical or efficient thing to engage solicitors, but there was obviously a huge benefit, and the way I describe it is that you're going to have to do more work in the future if you don't engage legal advisors early, and by doing that it just makes makes sure that your house is in order. So we often see founders use other document generation platforms to help them produce a suite of legal documents that can send off to investors and, to be honest, that's really good and it almost is the best solution for really early stage businesses who are just looking to have documents in place. When it comes to negotiating with institutional investors, you need to have more robust suite of documents that actually cover your interest. We've seen issues in the past where it's not always to do with equity necessarily and to do with giving up an amount of equity, but it's to do with consent rights and to do with things that actually, as a founder, you didn't realize, you're actually signing up to needing a investors consent every time you want to raise money, every time you want to hire a new employee, every time you want to get rid of someone in the company at all, no matter what their threshold of salary is or how important they are to the business, whenever you want to take on any debt, whether that even be a short, short intercompany loan or give, give money back into the company. So there are so many actions that you think, okay, in practice I wouldn't, I wouldn't need to worry about this. But you have to remember, if an investor is coming in to take 10% of equity in your business, the rights they have over the business and the consent rights they, they should match that 10% and not be sort of almost what you'd expect yourself as a sole founder, to have. So it's little things like that, and I think these points are really important because every time you you build a set of legal documents or a term sheet, if you're looking with a view to the future, you're always going to get investors who are going to look back to the previous term sheet and want to see that, or previous investment, previous long form document, and if there are things that seem to be not in places they should. They're not going to agree to changing that if it's not in their favor. So everything is with a view to the future

Amardeep Parmar: 21:14

Is there anything else you want to bring up, just before we go into quick fire questions that you think you'd love the founders to know?

Rajiv Samani: 21:20

To be honest, I think we've covered quite a lot of points. I think I think one thing and this is just more from my experience and experience of working with some really, really technically gifted lawyers who also are very commercial, there are a few different points that can be quite good tricks and hacks to look at as a as a founder. Often, if you're looking at institutional investors, they'll they'll want to direct you on the board of the company because they want to see all the information that the high and how the company is doing so they can pass on to their, their investment committee etc. But also there are some typically angel investors who aren't too too fussed with that. They might present that as their first option. But often you can get away with, as a founder, of offering what's called a board observer, right, so angels get to see what's going on with with with the director and the company, but they're not actually involved in the voting process, and that can often be because they often have 10, 20, 30, 40 more angel investments. They're not necessarily considering being involved in the management of each of these companies, but they want to just the information that they can sort of see how how their portfolio investments is going. So that's something that's quite important because, remember, if you give someone a director right, they're on the board and in the future, the balance of the control of your board is very important for voting and all these decisions that we refer to. As much as we say, there are matters that require investor consent. There are also matters that require the board's consent, which is pretty much all matters on the company's act. So you want to make sure the balance of a favor is always in favor of the founders and the company over any investors. So that's an important point and I think other things considered is you're always going to look from a legal perspective at things that are at the present right. You're saying I'm an employee of the company as well as a director and a founder and things are great. I don't see myself leaving. This is my baby. I would never leave unless we're selling. But you need to make sure that you're protecting yourself in the future and that there's the thing that we see called good leave or bad leave provisions, and these are some of the most technically tricky areas of drafting when it comes to an investment, and often institutional investors will have pretty strong views about what determines a good leave or a bad leave, and the reason why this is important is because you own your class of shares and you expect to receive money in return for those shares. However, if you're what's deemed to be a bad leave which normally is someone who has done something that is misconduct, or broke their research to covenants et cetera stuff like that or done something that's against the company's act to get disqualified, that's what would be a bad leave and that's how it would be commonly be drafted. If you're acting for a founder, however, what investors often do is they try to define what a good leave is. So what? Someone who's actually left them will receive the reward of all their shares and then say everything else is a bad leave, which is a massive capsule, which is actually quite tricky, because then you're just saying, if you've not done one of these few things, you're not a good leave. Therefore, by virtue, you're a bad leaver, and we see that often. Then you think, just reading it from layman's terms, I'm not going to be a bad leaver, but I'm the founder of this business. I would never be a bad leaver. I never want to leave, but actually what you need to realize is that you need to make it the other way around. You need to say this is what a bad leave is and everything else is a good leave. As long as I don't do that, I'm a good leave. And it all goes down to receiving the rights to your shares in the future. Because if you're a bad leave, then you might have started the business, got all these investors on board, provided all this value, but then you then lose the right of your shares as you leave, as opposed to a good leave who receives the value of their shares. So this is a really tricky area of drafting which we often see. People just tick a box and say, okay, it's not going to affect me. In a term sheet you'd often see standard good leave or standard bad leave of provisions. You should never accept that. If you're a founder, you want to see the detail in a term sheet, because otherwise what will happen is that what we're seeing investors do more and more nowadays is try to align themselves with what's called the BBCA documents. This is the British venture capital association documents. This is a great suite of template documents for for investors and founders and we often see them use as template for drafting long-form documents. However, the caveat to that is they are inherently known in the market as being quite investor friendly. So if you're a founder, you don't want to accept standard BBC a wording around good, leave a badly, because that will include some of the provisions I've said earlier on which aren't in your favor. So with those particular areas that are quite tentative, course, important to take advice, and I think that just understanding the concept is one thing and talking to someone who knows about them, but also when it gets to that stage and there are a couple of institutional investors looking to invest in your company, you do need to take legal advice.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:37

So thanks so much for sharing that. We're going to move into a quick fire questions now. So first one is who are the three British Asians you think are doing incredible work that you love to spotlight and audience should be paying attention to? Definitely. So,

Rajiv Samani: 25:50

umber one, I mean. First of all, this is quite hard because there are a lot of people in in my life who have influenced me, but also people who I think are doing really well now or in the past. But these three, I think, have definitely shown a light in terms of people who I look up to and also who are doing great, great work in the British Asian Entrepreneur Sector. So the first is a a chap all the Carney, who's the CEO of Sanjay foods, and I mean Sanjay foods is a fantastic business generated in Leicester, it's a food not hospitality business and specializing Not just primarily but in some really luxury, top, high-end corporate events, having catered the Downing Street Divali party, for example. But also they do a lot of weddings and have a have a great, a great venue in in in the Coventry, and so that's as a business has come from sort of nowhere to being a family-run restaurant to being a big corporate hospitality business specializing in food catering, and I think they're doing really good things, hiring a lot of staff and and and just generally promoting British Asians. So that's a really good business I want to shout out. Secondly is a chap called, Sailesh Thakrar, who's an entrepreneur, a British Asian entrepreneur, for a company called Dallas Holdings and that they approve franchise partner of, Pret A manje. So they've franchised pret across Europe, across the UK and the Midlands and even further north and south, away from just. They've been a pretty five minutes in London and also recently launching in the US, but it's East side, on West side, so again they've taken that their previous holdings business, which is involved in sort of petrol stations, coffee shops and services and then enabling working with press as a franchise partner, and then they're doing really, really well globally. So we'll have to give them a shout out. And and then a chap called Paresh Pau, who's the CEO of techno world and so no world is a is a leading supplier of laptops and PCs. And again, this is another family run business that started from nothing 20, 25 years ago and it's now a leading supplier in the UK. It's a great story of sort of a business that you don't necessarily think you fall into, but a simple business where you you receive product and you you put it together and you and you retell it out and it can show that Ideas come in all different forms and it's sort of to see someone start from a, from a young agency passing to the family and I. There's three sons and I involved the business as well. It's great to see a family run business and I think that really matches the ethos of British Asian generally looking after your family and also keeping family heritage together. So those are my three shout outs.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:19

Awesome, it was so great. So next one is how can you find out more about? You find out more about Joelson?

Rajiv Samani: 28:24

So if you can find out more about me, I mean I'm all over LinkedIn. I post quite a lot not as much as you, Amar, but I do face a good amount. So my details are all on LinkedIn. I'm happy to have a chat and speak generally. I'm all across Joelson's website as well, but it's generally speaking. You can always drop me a message on LinkedIn, always say let's have a quick chat to discuss this and that. And, Joelson, we're quite big on social media because a lot of our clients started off reaching out to us in these platforms recently and in the past as well. So I'm across social media, my my, my details all over my LinkedIn. So, yeah, feel free to always drop me a message. No question is silly.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:03

Then, is anything that the audience could help you with that you're looking for right now?

Rajiv Samani: 29:07

So I suppose one of the things that's really exciting about Joelson is that we I think last August or September we became B corporate credited, which is that we're ready with the fourth law firm in the UK to become B corporate credit seed, and since then there have been four or five more firms joining in being UK based law firms who are B corporate credit seed, which is exciting and great. Being I mean B accredited. What it what it means is that your your focus, as well as being an entity which drives the profits and is also one that helps the Planet at the same time and it's not either or. So we're really looking to knowledge share and understand from other B Court businesses sort of what they're doing to get even better, how they can look to sort of really help this net carbon environment that we're looking to pursue and generally help us make our processes more ESG friendly. So a lot of our clients are now going on this path, if they're not already. So I'm really personally interested in someone who's involved in that in the company to see who can sort of knowledge share and explain what they're doing to make their company as as B court friendly as possible.

Amardeep Parmar
:

So thanks again. So much from the review. Any final words?

Rajiv Samani:

No, nothing from me. I think it's been great to chat, I think, a shout out of, as you myself and Joelson with it exclusively go partners of BAE. We love working with you guys. I think you don't get enough shout out yourself for all the great work you're doing. These podcasts wouldn't be, it wouldn't be able to happen if it wasn't for the hard work that you put in Amar and Gurvir as well, doing so much stuff in terms of having lots of introductory calls, angel investment discussions, making sure that everyone has heard and has, everyone has had time for each other, and I think the work you guys doing, I think you'd be my full shout out. So, yeah, I think thank you for putting everything like this together and and making all of us have a voice, like like you do.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:55

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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