General Standards provides end-to-end advice, services and documentation to promote, negotiate and close early-stage startup investments.

General Standards advises on capital raisings, large and small, every day. We’re well versed in helping startups document small contributions from family and friends, through to formal venture capital investments, strategic investment from large corporations, accelerator investments, crowd sourced funding, government grants and commercial loans – and often combinations of a few such funding sources.

We have clients that have raised money from most of the prominent Australian venture capital firms, nearly all prominent accelerators and many leading institutions and corporates.

As our role as the company’s lawyers means we have to work with all shareholders into the future, we take a collaborative approach which facilitates the startup and its investors building a good relationship during the financing process.

We are well-tuned to the market-standards and customary terms in financings, while adept at negotiating protections and specialised outcomes for founders.

We almost universally advocate for startups and investors to spend the time developing a comprehensive term sheet that deals with the financial elements of the deal, along with the detail of all the important shareholder governance matters. This approach allows our clients to reach consensus with their investors and minimise either party’s lawyers having to negotiate anything post-term sheet. This often allows us to also offer a fixed-fee to prepare the long form documents and close the financing, as all terms are fully settled once the term sheet has been signed.

We are also often able to fully fix-fee the earlier stages of financings, and for clients doing their second or later stage of financing with General Standards, fees are often very low due to the processes and documentation in previous rounds.

General Standards regularly advises on multi-million dollar rounds with dozens of investors, which requires a significant amount of coordination to distribute documentation, collect feedback, harmonise amendments, undertake company resolutions and oversee the financial close. This procedural expertise gives General Standards clients confidence that their house is always in order.

Our experience is particularly useful in crowd sourced funding where there may be dozens, or hundreds, of small investors. We can setup and assist to manage formal online share registries to allow for easier shareholder management.

Capital raising is an integral part of the General Standards legal practice, and General Standards is proud to have advised hundreds of founders on successful financings.