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

The CEO and co-founder of SlideShare, Sinha was the first to create a site that allowed slides to be taken beyond limited office or educational use and shared online. Sinha has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University. After graduation, she worked as a researcher at the Information School at UC Berkeley, focusing on how to optimize search engines and recommended systems (those “recommended” titles that pop up on Amazon when you're looking for a book, for instance.) She started her own user-experience consultancy -- clients included eBay, iFilm, AAA and Blue Shield -- which then eventually morphed into SlideShare.

Annie Chang: Co-Founder and Head of Product at LOLapps

LOLapps is one of the largest companies in the social application space, reaching over 44 MM monthly unique users. LOLapps offers tools that allow anyone to create, personalize and share customized applications on social networks. Prior to LOLapps, Annie was a product manager at BitTorrent and an engineer at Adobe. Annie holds a B.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley.

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.