Startup Law and Fundraising for Entrepreneurs and Startup Advisors

“Can't believe I just binge-read (and loved!) a 577-page law book! If you're a startup founder, check out this baby by @pswegle.”
- T. B., Teaching Fellow of Computer Science @Harvard, Ph.D.

“The best advice comes from relevant experience, and Paul Swegle demonstrates that he has a ton of it in Startup Law and Fundraising. A compendium of everything entrepreneurs, both newbies and veterans, need to know to take their startup from cradle to sale or IPO, the book provides not only detailed information on everything from company formation to IP protection and fundraising, but also includes dozens of real-life startup case studies that demonstrate why these topics are so critical to startup success.”
-Geoff Entress, Managing Director of Pioneer Square Labs, former Venture Partner at Voyager Capital and Madrona Venture Group, angel investor in over 200 companies.

Entrepreneurship can be chaotic. Some chaos drives innovation. But legal chaos rocks many startups to their foundations, dashing dreams, jeopardizing jobs and investments, creating liabilities, and slowing innovation.

Paul Swegle wrote Startup Law and Fundraising for Entrepreneurs and Startup Advisors to help startups avoid these pitfalls, including the pitfall of struggling to grow a poorly funded business.

This is a clear, practical book meant to help entrepreneurs and their advisors:

-build on a solid foundation,
-avoid costly legal and regulatory mistakes, and
-raise the money needed for stability, innovation, and operational success.

Startup Law and Fundraising is for everyone interested in business, business law, startup fundraising, and financial literacy. Its 550 pages cover an unmatched range of startup-focused concepts, tips, traps, strategies, and best practices. Fifty-one colorful startup case studies keep things interesting. It is used as a primary coursebook in many prestigious law and MBA schools, and it is ideal for entrepreneurship clinics and entrepreneurial law clinics.

Legal, governance and regulatory hurdles are covered in the book’s first ten chapters. But surviving those hurdles is no guarantee of success. Many startups simply run out of money or make costly fundraising mistakes.

Startup Law and Fundraising devotes five chapters to creating and executing a fundraising plan around the principles of just-in-time finance and raising money from the right investors, in the right amounts, and on the right terms, whether from friends and family, angel investors, angel investing groups, seed funds, VCs, strategic investors, accelerators, or crowdfunding platforms.

The final chapters fittingly cover the final chapters of startup life – optimizing an “exit” with a successful IPO or sale, or, as happens about 80% of the time, managing through insolvency and winding up.

Startup Law and Fundraising is already providing the core foundation for entrepreneurial law and finance classes at every level, including at top law and MBA schools, undergraduate business programs, community colleges, and startup incubators and accelerators, providing the highest level of legal literacy and financial literacy for all.

Author Paul Swegle is a business attorney, startup advisor, adjunct law professor, and startup founder. In 2025, he launched his own startup, General Counsel Audit (www.generalcounselaudit.com). He teaches entrepreneurial law and finance at Seattle University School of Law and Gonzaga Law School, focusing on applied business law.

Paul has served as general counsel to thirty companies, counseled hundreds of others, and worked for the SEC and DOJ early in his career. He currently serves as in-house general counsel to numerous companies across several industries. He has completed $13+ billion of financings and M&A deals, including growing and selling startups to publicly-traded companies ING, Capital One, Nortek, and Abbott, and recently helping take Porch public.