Startup Legal
Done Right
Don’t burn money on boilerplate legal 👎
Self-service software for the standard stuff
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Intros to experienced startup attorneys for the strategic stuff
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Support from real humans to help you make the leap.
Easily file online for a new Delaware C-Corporation and EIN today.
Gust Launch is a SaaS platform for founders that facilitates the legal, financial, and equity operations necessary to incorporate and run a high-growth startup.
Cover the Basics without
the Billable Hours
Incorporation and Formation
COI, first action by the board of directors, bylaws, officer and director appointment, founder IP assignment, founder stock grants with customized vesting and 83(b).
NDAs, Advisors, and Contractors
Protect your business as you build your team and form relationships with external partners. Cover intellectual property assignment, non-disclosure, and equity arrangements for a variety of early relationships.
Manage your Cap Table
Model your first funding round, collect signatures online for SAFEs and Convertible Notes w/ board approval built in.
Your Personal
Translation Layer
Bi-Weekly Office Hours
Leverage the collective experience of the Gust community to help you navigate your early operations by joining small group office hours sessions with the Gust leadership team and fellow Gust founders.
Chat Support
A startup expert is always at your fingertips via chat with a 15-minute first response SLA business hours eastern time.
Webinars
Weekly sessions w/ Q&A on everything from fundraising to startup insurance from the Gust team and experts from our partner network.
Find the Right Lawyer
Vetted Startup Attorneys
Finding a trusted law partner to handle your companies most sensitive needs can be daunting. We’ve partnered with the best startup law firms across the country to help you find the right match for your business.
Waived General Retainer
Startup lawyers often secure a general retainer in the thousands of dollars before they work with a new client. Our network of partners have agreed to waive their general retainer based on your use of Gust Launch. You’ll only pay work-specific retainers once you have an established legal need.
One Hour Off Your Monthly Bill
Get an hour of discounted legal work each month. Our legal partners have agreed to deduct one hour every month from your total work together, saving you hundreds.
We’re pretty good at what we do,
but you don’t have to take our word for it.
the services.”
with Gust.
As a mentor for Techstars, and half a dozen other accelerators and entrepreneurial programs, I advise all my companies to use Gust to create their entity.”
And when we had questions, they were super responsive and helpful. I highly recommend their platform and their people.”
I wouldn’t look anywhere else to incorporate, or to manage everything else we use Gust for.
I wish I discovered them earlier in my start-up journey, I would have saved a boatload of time and money.
Their team goes above and beyond, and their platform makes incorporation and equity management extremely easy and straightforward.
As someone relatively new to entity formation and fundraising, I am supported in all ways to be successful.”
Gust Launch makes it easy to start and run a high-growth business by integrating world-class services with the click of a button.”
The forms are top notch and are a perfect fit for start-ups and our growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
FAQ
Gust Launch is the Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for founders that facilitates the legal, financial, accounting and back-office operations necessary to incorporate and operate a new, high-growth venture.
With all Gust Launch packages you’ll be able to:
- Incorporate as a Delaware C-Corporation in just days
- Form your company online. Select your Board of Directors, adopt Bylaws designed for you and prepare to issue stock to your colleagues
- Receive a federal tax identification number (EIN), which you’ll need to open your company bank account
- Issue stock online, share your cap table with potential investors, model fundraising scenarios and simplify due diligence
- Track your company’s expenses and receive insights about your cash flow and possible tax deductions
Beyond incorporation and setup, Gust Launch Accelerate can help you manage your startup’s legal, financial, and operational needs, including early-stage fundraising, community support and more:
- Work with a law firm that will waive their retainer and provide a non-accruing credit for one hour of billing per month
- Manage early-stage fundraising with Gust Launch SAFE and Convertible Notes, which work together to prevent founder dilution and streamline later investments
- Form legally sound relationships with contractors and advisors
- Protect your intellectual property with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)
- Connect with other founders, investors, and experts through the Gust Launch Founder Community
- Optionally, have your bookkeeping and accounting handled by pros who will make sure you’re GAAP-compliant before you need to work with investors
- And much more as we expand our product to grow with your business
Gust Launch features easy workflows to guide you through the process of creating customized legal documents.
All Gust Launch packages begin with complete incorporation and formation, including issuing stock.
The incorporation and company setup process automatically creates the following legal and government documents:
- Certificate of Incorporation
- Form SS-4 (to create your EIN)
- Action by Sole Incorporator
- Corporate Bylaws
- First Action by the Board
- Certificate of Foreign Qualification (by state, if applicable)
- Board modifications
Stock issuance and management documents are also easily created through guided workflows and allow the tracking of counter-party signatures:
- Stock Grant Notice
- Stock Purchase Agreement
- Stockholder Agreement
- Spousal Consent
- 83(b) Election Forms
- Stock Repurchase Notice
Additionally, Gust Launch Accelerate gives you access to workflows that easily create the following legal agreements:
- IP assignment
- SAFE rounds & unlimited issuance
- Convertible Note rounds & unlimited issuance
- One-way Nondisclosure Agreement
- Mutual Nondisclosure Agreement
- Independent Contractor Agreement
- Advisor Agreement
The startup and operating documents generated by Gust Launch are a comprehensive, integrated set that has been created and reviewed by leading startup law firms. In other words, Gust Launch itself was built with the help of lawyers, and all the processes and documents included are fully startup lawyer approved.
While Gust Launch itself is a business service designed by lawyers and with lawyers, Gust does not, itself, provide legal advice. Instead, if you choose to make use of Gust Launch Accelerate, we can introduce you to law firms that have agreed to waive their retainers and provide you with a free hour of work each month.
If you already are thinking about a particular lawyer, feel free to put them in touch with us, and we would be delighted to walk them through our platform and bring them into our legal network at no cost. We have found that most of the startup lawyers with whom we have shared our plans enthusiastically approve our way of doing things because it sets their clients’ companies up right, and frees their time up to provide higher value to you as a counselor, advisor, and advocate.
Gust Launch and Gust do not provide tax and legal advice, but for some customers of Gust Launch we do provide an introduction to a law firm as well as an optional relationship with professionals who provide bookkeeping, accounting, and tax preparation. If you choose to retain a law firm through Gust Launch, you become their client directly. In all cases, the professional relationship is between you and the lawyer or accountant.
No, Gust Launch customers do not have to work with legal partners. If the customer already has an attorney or does not currently need legal services, they do not need to request to be connected with a legal partner to get the full benefit of the product.
If you are already working with a startup attorney and they are interested in joining our network of legal partners, they should get in touch with us at lawpartnering@gust.com to get started.
Gust Launch, through our legal partners, has created an internal directory to enable customers to access our cultivated network of law partners. When a Gust Launch Accelerate customer lets us know that they would like to take advantage of the offering, the customer will receive a few randomly generated partner options, filtered based on objective factors like geography and industry. Further, Gust Launch does not charge our legal partners to be listed in the directory.
After receiving the partner options from Gust, the customer will choose which firm they would like to be introduced to. Gust will then send the partner some basic information about the customer (full name of the founder, physical address, and company name) so that the partner can run a conflicts check. If after performing the conflicts check the legal partner agrees to meet the customer, Gust will send an introductory email to both the customer and the legal partner so they can schedule their initial meeting.
At this point, Gust will have no further communication with the customer or partner concerning the nature of the relationship. Gust will not interfere and is in no way involved with the attorney-client relationship. Additionally, the customer is not required to engage the legal partner and maintains full control over which attorneys they engage on behalf of themselves as individuals or on behalf of the corporation.
It is important to note that Gust Launch only filters based on objective factors and does not perform a subjective analysis of the client’s needs before providing options, nor does Gust recommend a specific partner. Gust Launch is not a legal referral service. The customer must make their decision about which partner they wish to be connected with based on their own independent judgment and consideration.
Bills for legal services are generally calculated using an “hour” of work as the unit of billing.
A non-accruing hourly credit is a credit provided each month to customers subscribed to Gust Launch Accelerate and Raise plans. The credit is good for one billed hour, which means that the customer’s chosen Gust Launch legal partner will deduct one hour off billed legal service each month. If a customer does not use any legal services from the partner in a month, that hourly credit will not roll forward or accumulate. Additionally, if the customer has an outstanding invoice to the legal partner, the customer can not deduct the next month’s free hour to reduce the outstanding invoice.
Customers and legal partners can make any arrangements outside of the legal offering to which both parties agree within their own separate engagement. Gust will not communicate or dispute legal bills on behalf of customers. The customer must manage their relationship with their attorney.
Gust Launch’s ability to “recommend” a legal partner to Gust Launch Accelerate customers is limited because our process has to conform to the legal ethics rules in all 50 states. These rules exist to prevent unauthorized referral services.
In cooperation with these rules, we created a curated legal directory that allows us to ethically provide potential partners for customers to connect with. Our process takes the information we have already collected as part of a Gust Launch customer’s incorporation process (industry, product, physical address) and compares that against the information we collect from our legal partners (offices, industries, how many new clients they will take per month). We can then provide the customer with a list of potential partners that may be a good fit (based on objective facts) for their company and may have an office close to them. Ultimately, a Gust Launch customer must make their own determination of which legal partner they would like to connect with.
Should for any reason your Gust Launch partner attorney cease to represent your company and you would like to connect with another Gust Launch legal partner, please reach out to us. We can generate a new partner list for you. Should you choose to become a client of one of these subsequently connected Gust Launch legal partners, your waived retainer and hourly credit per month will apply to this second partner, rather than the first.
Please keep in mind that you control your relationship with your attorney and are not required to use a Gust Launch partner attorney.
Law firms to which Gust Launch subscribers are introduced set their own rates. The non-accruing hourly credit provided each month by Gust Launch will be good for one hour of billing regardless of the law firm’s rate. Both inside and outside the Gust Launch legal network, law firms set their rate on the basis of a variety of factors. Most of these factors are dependent upon the legal work being done as well as on which attorney at the firm does the work.
Gust Launch subscribers are encouraged to ask about rates in their initial consultation with a legal network member before choosing to work with that law firm or attorney.
The law firms invited to participate in Gust Launch’s network of legal partners are selected based on their reputation for the ability to provide the legal services startups need throughout their life-cycles. Although the law firms to which we provide introductions for our customers are not selected for an introduction based on any subjective assessment of the particular customer’s needs, all our legal partners are vetted and approved before they are included in the legal network in the first place.
The initial retainer fee waived in the Gust Launch law firm partnership offering can also be called a “general retainer fee.” A general retainer fee is a payment made in advance of a lawyer providing legal services that covers a specific period of time rather than specific services performed. In this type of arrangement, a client is paying for the attorney’s “availability” rather than specific work product.
While all Gust Launch legal partners waive this type of initial general retainer fee, legal partners are free to request retainer fees covering specifically requested services or can charge flat fees to be paid in advance.