GIT Gets Legal: Legal Strategy for Entrepreneurs September 15, 2009

***Link to event registration and tickets: http://gitgetslegal.eventbrite.com/

Entrepreneurs face a plethora of legal questions about their business ventures that can be overwhelming for even experienced entrepreneurs. Retaining the right counsel and building a partnership with the right law firm can make all of the difference in effectively launching and successfully growing your business. With this panel, GIT will address the most important issues confronting emerging companies, from the perspective of experienced attorneys and entrepreneurs that hire and rely on them.

The panel will include attorneys from Orrick with expertise in the areas of corporate/finance, intellectual property and employment, and entrepreneurs with experience in various stages of growing a company. Through dialogue and stories from the panelists, learn about the typical legal issues faced by entrepreneurs and how to avoid those pitfalls. Join us and come find out how to identify the right counsel for your venture, how best and most-effectively (and cost-efficiently) work with your lawyers, how to use your law firm for more than just legal services and many more essentials on building a great company with the help of your law firm.

Panelists will include (more tba):

Jeannie Shin: Corporate partner of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Jeannie advises private and public companies on a full range of their corporate needs. As a member of Orrick's Emerging Companies Group, Jeannie represents emerging companies and venture capital and other investors and has extensive experience with start-up companies in their formation, debt and equity financings, private placements and general corporate counseling. Additionally, Jeannie focuses on mergers & acquisitions, assisting with liquidity events both on the sell-side and buy-side. Jeannie has extensive experience representing clients in a wide range of industries, including software, internet, life sciences, energy, semiconductors, and consumer products and retail. Jeannie also advises companies and investors in cross border transactions primarily involving Asia.

Nancy Chen -- Nancy, a partner in Orrick's Silicon Valley office, is a member of the Compensation and Benefits group. Ms. Chen's practice focuses primarily on executive compensation and employee benefits issues for emerging growth companies. She advises clients on the tax and securities issues related to equity-based compensation, including stock options, restricted stock, employee stock purchase plans and deferred compensation arrangements for both private and public companies as well as in the context of initial public offerings and acquisitions. Nancy also negotiates employment agreements and severance agreements on behalf of companies and executives and provides advice in acquisitions on golden parachute issues. She also advises companies on 401(k) plans, health, disability and other welfare benefit plans and compliance with ERISA and COBRA regulations.

Jessica Perry -- Jessica is a partner in Orrick’s Employment Group in the Silicon Valley office. Jessica represents employers in the retail, technology, pharmaceutical, entertainment, hospitality and financial services industries on a variety of issues. She has significant experience litigating wage-and-hour class actions; race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, sexual harassment and disability discrimination claims; and claims of breach of contract and wrongful termination. Jessica also counsels and trains clients on a wide variety of employment matters. She has expertise conducting audits of employment practices for her clients.

Virginia Pearcy -- Virginia is an intellectual property attorney with Orrick's San Francisco office. Her practice focuses on technology development and licensing, including the negotiation and preparation of patent, copyright and software licenses, complex development and license agreements, manufacturing agreements, distribution agreements, value added reseller (VAR) agreements, nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements, application service provider (ASP) agreements, marketing agreements, intellectual property assignments, professional services agreements and consultant agreements. Virginia earned her J.D. at age 20 and has since devoted her practice to intellectual property matters, as well as corporate transactions.

Rashmi Sinha: Co-Founder, CEO of Slideshare

Rashmi Sinha is cofounder and CEO for SlideShare, the world's largest
community for sharing presentations and documents. SlideShare is
growing rapidly
(more than 18 million monthly uniques) letting everyone from
marketers, conference speakers and academicians share presentations
and connect
with others. Rashmi has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Brown
University and did research on search engines and recommender systems
at UC Berkeley. She is a frequent speaker at conferences such as Web
2.0 Expo and Future of Web Apps. She writes a blog at rashmisinha.com
about running a startup.

Hilary DeCesare: Co-founder and CEO of Girl Ambition

Hilary DeCesare guides the company’s business vision and day-to-day operations. She is an accomplished entrepreneur and is experienced in all aspects of launching and growing a business. Prior to Girl Ambition, Hilary co-founded White Space Ink, a management consulting firm that specializes in working with start-up technology companies, with Girl Ambition VP Operations Debbie Munro. During her five-year tenure at White Space, Hilary counseled company executives on all areas of strategic planning and corporate development. Hilary also spent 10 years working at Oracle Corporation in various sales management positions, winning more than 100 sales awards. Hilary is also the director of the West Coast chapters of Tween Angels and WiredSafety. She is an active member of the Tassajara Hills Parent Teacher Association. Hilary graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a B.A. in Psychology.

Kenneth Jones: Chief Operating Officer, Five Across, acquired in 2007 by Cisco’s new Media Solutions Group (CMSG)

Prior to Cisco, Ken was responsible for the product vision and business strategy for the first truly white label social networking platform. The Five Across platform, Connect Community Builder, empowers companies to easily augment their websites with full-featured communities and user-generated content such as audio/video/photo sharing, blogs, podcasts, and profiles. Ken brought over 14 years in operations and business management to Five Across. Prior to Five Across, he was a Partner with Innovations Investments where he took operational roles with the group's portfolio companies to hone business strategies and work on acquisitions and dispositions. Ken was also the first employee at 12 Entrepreneuring where he helped build and manage the start team for the company and the company's first investment. Prior to 12 Entrepreneuring, Ken held Chief of Staff and Chief Administrative Officer positions at Thomas Weisel Partners, a leading investment brokerage and at Montgomery Securities (now Bank of America Securities). At Montgomery Securities, he was responsible for the firm's five-year strategy and investment banking business development. He was also a manager at Andersen Consulting Financial Services Practice. Ken holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California. Ken is an active member of the US Ski Team Foundation and an avid motorsport enthusiast.

Elisa Camahort Page: Co-Founder of Blogher

A blogging pioneer and marketing executive with 19 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Elisa Camahort Page leads all events, marketing and public relations for BlogHer while working as COO to ensure that all company operations deliver on our vision. Elisa was at the vanguard of professional and business blogging. Among the seven blogs she writes are blogs with personal, professional and political focus areas. Immediately to co-founding BlogHer, Elisa was running a high-tech marketing consultancy, Worker Bees, after a successful career as a marketing executive in the cable broadband sector. Her most recent corporate position was Senior Director of Product Marketing at Terayon Communication Systems, where she managed multiple product lines, senior product management staff, and multi-million dollar budgets. In addition to her many personal blogs, Elisa is a frequent public speaker and is widely read as BlogHer's conference leader and reality television editor. Elisa is a founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and serves on the Board of Directors of the 42nd Street Moon Theatre in San Francisco, the programming advisory committee for SXSW Interactive and the Board of Advisors of the Anita Borg Institute.

Girls in Tech is a social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent and influential women in technology. As young women with the capacity to inspire, we made it our personal desire and passion to create and sustain an organization that focuses on the collaboration, promotion, growth and success of women in the technology sector.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is an international law firm with more than 1,100 lawyers located throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. We focus on complex and novel finance and innovative corporate transactions, and litigation.

With more than 110 lawyers, Orrick's Emerging Companies Group has a unique focus on the business and legal needs of emerging companies and the venture capitalists and investment banks that support them. With a broad spectrum of practice areas and the resources of an international law firm with 21 offices on three continents, Orrick's Emerging Companies Group brings depth and breadth of experience to companies on the journey from the "garage" to the global marketplace.

Official Website: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=99795714905