Launching Altreon Advisors

I’ve worked with start-ups of various sizes for nearly 30 years. During all of that time, however, I have been part of a large organization. I’ve been a partner at a variety of world-class law firms for over 20 years. At each one, I learned various lessons and continued to develop and hone my ability to counsel growth companies at all stages. I also changed and grew as a person as I dealt with various adversities.

I finally decided that it was time to take the plunge and launch my own shop. Like many of my clients and friends over the years, I’m giving up a reasonably steady paycheck in favor of the freedom to focus on the things I really like to do. I love the intersection of business, psychology and law. I’ve long told associates that I’m 1/3 business advisor, 1/3 lawyer and 1/3 social worker.

Why? Because at the core, private high growth businesses are almost always fundamentally about the people and their interrelations. How do the founders interact with their teams - how much equity do you give and to whom? How do you engage with your investors and board of directors - the legal documents tell you what you MUST give them for information - but how do you structure that so that you have a good partnership? How do founders grow with their companies or realize (themselves or with the “help” of the board) that it is time to bring someone else in? Should the founders have super-voting shares to maintain control or are they better off managing the process through choosing good partners and showing that they continue to be the best leaders?

And when the company has grown to a scale and scope that could justify becoming a public company, how do we do it? How do we build the right team and put in place the right incentives to get through what is inevitably a tumultuous period.

The legal documents provide a framework for all of these decisions. My goal is to help companies develop a framework that helps them to be successful. I intend to partner for the long term with a select group of companies, and hope to serve as a valued strategic partner.

Going out on my own also allows me to be flexible in how I structure these relationships. In some cases, it will make sense to bill by the hour (at a rate that is a fraction of my big law partner rate). Sometimes a monthly retainer will make sense. And in many cases I’ll take equity as part of my compensation or invest in the preferred stock of a client in order to continue to align our incentives.

Most of all however, I plan to do what I love the best - to work with the dynamic, exciting, sometimes infuriating and always interesting people who are creating our future.