John brings over 30 years of experience advising emerging growth companies, entrepreneurs, and investors across a wide range of corporate transactions. His practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, private equity transactions, and general corporate law. With a particular emphasis on startup companies, John has extensive experience representing businesses from their inception through liquidation events, including navigating complex debt and equity financings, joint ventures, public and private securities offerings, and strategic partnerships.
In addition to his corporate and transactional work, John is a trusted advisor to technology companies, venture capital funds, and angel investors. He has represented both companies and investors in funding rounds and regularly counsels clients on entity formation, financing strategies, and the structuring of buy-side and sell-side transactions. He has also represented many buyers in M&A transactions, handling all aspects of these buy-side M&A transactions from end to end. His work spans a variety of industries, with a strong focus on technology, software, and emerging markets.
Before joining the firm, John served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for a leading Austin-based SaaS technology company, where he gained invaluable insight into the business side of legal practice. During his time as General Counsel, John managed the negotiation and execution of a broad array of technology licensing agreements, SaaS platform implementations, and data privacy matters, including GDPR compliance and data breach responses. His in-house experience also equipped him with a deep understanding of the challenges faced by C-suite executives and boards, particularly in the areas of corporate governance, fiduciary duties, and risk management.
John is also a sought-after speaker and educator. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas Law School, where he taught a course entitled The Life Cycle of a Technology Start Up, and has presented on topics related to venture capital, corporate governance, and M&A at several universities and business networks throughout Texas.
John's focus includes the following areas:
- Representation of companies in connection with numerous debt and equity financings
- Advising entrepreneurs in connection with entity formation and early-stage funding rounds
- Advising Board members and senior management teams with respect to fiduciary duties and other Board responsibilities
- Counseling in connection with various data and privacy matters, including extensive experience with international data privacy issues and GDPR
- Negotiation of numerous SaaS-model platform agreements, master service agreements, data supply agreements, and licensing agreements, including negotiation of SLAs and related provisions