Late-stage venture-backed companies look to us for legal guidance on the strategy, timing and execution of their public markets debut. Our Capital Markets lawyers augment existing client teams to ensure an efficient and seamless transition into the public markets. With decades of experience, hundreds of completed offerings and success advising thousands of leading technology and life sciences companies, we are uniquely qualified to support emerging growth and maturing companies get to what’s next.

Focused Expertise

Our firm-wide focus on technology and life sciences markets extends to public offerings. Every one of the more than 350 public offerings we’ve closed has been for a venture-backed company. Our Capital Markets team works exclusively on technology and life sciences deals, which keeps us at the cutting edge of the market dynamics and trends most relevant to our clients. 

Further, our firm’s deep relationships and ongoing expertise representing venture capital, growth equity and other late-stage private and public company investors gives us a unique 360-degree perspective on capital raising transactions in this space. 

Building Your Bench

We recognize that our key competitive advantage is offering deep industry experience with subject matter expertise. Our team combines preeminent general corporate representation for venture-backed companies with the keen know-how to execute a successful IPO or direct listing. The team that knows you best stays by your side, ensuring alignment and leveraging institutional knowledge, and is augmented by key capital markets team members to help you prepare for the IPO or direct listing process, negotiate with the SEC, manage key stakeholders and transition to a public company. Other firms may have the lead partner supervise other lawyers’ work, but our partners are in the trenches with our clients and maintain an active, day-to-day, start-to-finish involvement in every public offering we handle.

Storytelling Excellence

Your IPO is a one-time marketing opportunity to enhance your brand, including with customers, employees, partners and potential acquisition targets. Your S-1 sets the stage for who you will be as a public company and needs to reflect your core mission, goals and values. We know how to craft that story in your S-1 prospectus while still managing the SEC, bankers and internal stakeholders who just want to get the deal done. We will work alongside you to not only ensure a successful IPO or direct listing but also to position you to hit the ground running as you adapt to the many complexities and opportunities of being a newly public company.

Facilitating A Smooth Execution

Given the number of public offerings our clients have completed, our team has worked with all the major investment banks both as company and underwriter counsel. We lead the entire IPO working group – investment bankers, auditors, underwriter counsel and even the SEC staff – to troubleshoot issues that might otherwise delay an offering and help it stay on schedule. We have also worked extensively with the SEC groups that are most likely to review your filings and can help make the SEC review process more efficient.

Well-rounded IPO Support

We complement our deep bench of capital markets and corporate lawyers with a range of other key transactional services, including:

  • IP, Licensing and Strategic Transactions – We have advised thousands of technology companies in the licensing, acquisition and development of intellectual property – and have negotiated opposite all of the major technology and life sciences players. We use that experience to identify possible obstacles and find the best ways to eliminate or navigate them as a company prepares to go public.
  • Employee Benefits and Compensation – We pioneered many of the compensation practices that have become standard for venture-backed companies and continue to innovate through an approach that marries best practices with competitive acumen and tax and regulatory discipline. Our deep insight into industry practices and cutting-edge developments enables us to calibrate to the needs and objectives of companies transitioning to the public markets.
  • Tax Planning/Compliance – Tax advantages and business purposes often conflict, and we’re adept at figuring out how to achieve the right balance to serve your needs. Given our significant global activity, we also have deep experience in the tax aspects of cross-border activities.
  • Dual-track M&A – Our Mergers & Acquisitions practice supports our clients if they decide to pursue a dual-track approach to preparing for an exit. That approach ensures efficiency and maximum responsiveness to acquisition opportunities. Further, we intentionally avoid conflicts with frequent acquirers so that our clients receive the best representation with their current, experienced team and aren’t forced to find alternative representation due to a conflict.