Thanks to a legacy of creativity and a deep pool of talent, Austin’s venture ecosystem has exploded in the last decade. As a whole, Texas is a promising state for startups and growth companies: in 2021, companies across the state commanded $10.55 billion in venture capital—a $123% increase from 2020.
The state’s friendliness toward businesses and Austin’s growing number of technology firms make it an ideal spot for Gunderson Dettmer. We represented companies and venture capitalists in Austin for over a decade before opening our downtown Austin office in April of 2021 with a team of two corporate attorneys. We have since grown to over a dozen attorneys focused exclusively on the Texas venture capital and growth equity ecosystem and across a range of practices – from company representation, to fund formation and investments, to tech transactions.
We bring Gunderson’s experience, knowledge and support and our drive for excellence to Austin, and our team here represents numerous companies at every stage of growth, as well as key investors in a variety of industries. Our clients are focused on a wide range of industries, including technology, healthcare, energy, materials science, web3/blockchain, consumer products, cybersecurity and ecommerce.
Clients benefit from our extensive licensing, strategic partnering, and commercial transactions experience. Our Austin team is embedded in the firmwide tech transactions practice, which is among the largest and most active in the world, and we leverage our depth of experience to help clients identify and navigate the changing risks and opportunities that come with every stage of growth.
Complementing our company-side practice, our fund formation team has deep Silicon Valley roots representing the most prominent venture capital and growth equity firms in the world. That market-leading experience helps our Texas-based fund clients address the full range of formation, compliance and operational needs as they continue to pursue opportunities.
PitchBook’s Global Venture Capital League Tables recently confirmed Gunderson Dettmer as the “most active law firm” in the world for the eighth year running, and we also earned the top spot for our representation of clients in Texas. The Austin office contributes to that leadership by leveraging the breadth of experience and exceptional resources of Gunderson Dettmer to the local market. Since opening in 2021, our Austin office has represented companies in numerous mergers and acquisition transactions and closed over 50 financings for venture fund and company clients, raising over $1 billion in capital for the region’s most innovative companies. And despite being relatively new to the city, we represent numerous funds in connection with fund formation, fundraising, operations, portfolio investments, compliance, and tax matters.
OUR WORK
Our commitment to the innovation economy is reflected in the practices of our team:
Company Representation: Forming, Scaling & Maturing
- Entrepreneurs and emerging company representation
- Pre-venture, venture and growth equity financings for private companies
- Corporate governance and strategy for private and public companies
- Licensing, strategic partnering and commercial transactions
- Life sciences licensing and strategic partnering transactions
- Mergers and acquisitions, both sell-side and buy-side
Fund Representation: Accessing & Deploying Capital
- Venture capital and growth equity fund formation, operations and compliance
- Venture capital fund portfolio investments
- Growth equity fund investments, both early-stage and late-stage
- Tax issues
The team also works seamlessly with practitioners in other offices to provide clients with world-class support for:
- Executive compensation needs for private and public companies
- Labor and employment issues for companies and funds
- Debt financing and secured transactions
- Data privacy and compliance issues
- IPOs and direct listings
- Capital markets and ongoing public company representation
BEYOND THE WORK
We refer to ourselves as a human-driven practice. Our success is due to how we prioritize people—and that goes far beyond our client work. We are proud to be active members of the Austin entrepreneur community, particularly in our sponsorship of Divinc, a nonprofit accelerator that brings necessary resources to underrepresented entrepreneurs so they can build high-growth companies.
We also partner with the CXO Summit, the region’s preeminent meeting of companies and investors involved in the software startup industry.