The Alerding Castor Hewitt faithful braved the chill and the rain
of Saturday, April 16th to participate in the 2011
Susan G. Komen
Race for the Cure. We're proud to announce that the team
surpassed its goal of raising $1000 to assist the Komen
Foundation's mission to end breast cancer forever and had a
fantastic time walking in downtown Indianapolis.
We'd like to send a big 'Thanks!' to those who donated to the
team's efforts and share a special 'Way to go!' with the team
members, along with...
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Indianapolis, IN – Mike Alerding, founding partner of Alerding
Castor Hewitt LLP, is slated to teach Business Law at Harrison
College this spring. The course combines the understanding of
legal theory with the acquaintance of the various forms of
contracts. Students will be taught the essentials of the
legal environment of business, tort law, contracts, commercial
transactions, government relations and property.
“I am teaching because I enjoy the process of observing the
improvement and...
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I know that you are expecting witty and poignant analysis
of some new and exciting aspect of technology and / or privacy
litigation, but that's not really the point of this
post. Rather, the impetus of this concoction of literary
excellence is a realization that I had regarding social
media. In the last two weeks I have experienced the following
(all on a large social media site that shall remain nameless but
that has a movie): (1) received birthday announcements and
pictures of my niece in...
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In the spirit of entertaining legal stories like the one below that
Chris recently shared with our Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP
audience, I thought I would share a story I ran across yesterday
about a trademark dispute. Also,
because Chris is a connoisseur of fine comfort food, I’m sure that
he will enjoy it.
A restaurant in Bellevue, Washington, John Howie Steak, has come up
with a caloric-intensive burger that starts with grilling a
12-ounce ground chuck patty and then tops it with Kurobuta...
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This is the second post in a series on developing a good business
model for an early stage company.
Proof of Scale and Proof of Commercialization (at
Profit)
Following POC, you want to prove that your concept can scale under
a viable business model. Proof of Scale and Proof of
Commercialization (at profit) work hand in hand as each is often
dependant on the other. POS refers to the ability for a
concept to scale in terms of sellable units in the marketplace and
business growth requirements....
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Any good business model includes: (1) a strong market opportunity;
(2) a solid management team; and (3) a sound capital
structure.
This is the first in a series of posts that will outline each
point.
1. Strong Market
Opportunity.
This is more than just finding a market opportunity that you want
to address. It involves development of a detailed model of
what the opportunity is (“IS”), how you can address it better than
anyone else (“HOW”), and how you can be profitable in doing so
(“PROFIT”)....
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I had the privilege of speaking
at the
Rainmakers Incubator event this morning. I
thought the Rainmakers team did a nice job organizing the event -
even with a last minute change in location due to factors outside
of their control. Thank you guys for the opportunity to join
you this morning!
The topic given to me was "Three Things Every Entrepreneur Should
Know." My legal practice focuses on entrepreneurial law,
funding law, SaaS business law and securities law. In these
fields I see a lot of...
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A colleague of mine brought to my attention two recent federal
cases in which the courts elected to deny motions to compel
electronically stored information (ESI). In
Kay Beer
Distributing v. Energy Brands, Inc.,the Eastern District of Wisconsin determined that, among
other things, Kay's request for every e-mail with their name in it
was too broad. The court also considered in its
determination the fact that Energy Brand's counsel had
offered to work with Kay to do more directed keyword...
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Emerging Indiana
technology companies should consider grant opportunities as an
alternative to raising private equity. The benefits are
obvious as you are not giving up a stake in the business in order
to secure strategic capital.
A client of mine this past week engaged my technology law firm to
assist in an SBIR grant opportunity. Other grant
opportunities include NIH grants and 21st Century Fund
grants.
The 21st Century Fund is a "must" to consider if you are an Indiana
technology business....
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There is a great four part series on
the
SpendMatters blog which walks
through one industry expert's story of the rise of
Iasta as a global leader in eSourcing
markets. This was fun for me to read. I am going on my
ninth year of representing Iasta as it's Business law / SaaS law
counsel and have loved seeing them grow from a modest Midwest
auction software provider to a global SaaS eScouring leader.
It is definitely worth a re-post on The Business & Culture
Blog.
The article is by Jason Busch,...
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Operating
under Indiana entrepreneurial law, I have seen a great number
of contracts across my desk, and many for new business owners
plunging into a world of negotiations. Fresh out of the gate,
it's important for savvy business owners to get up to speed quickly
on essential provisions that should be included in their
contracts.
For instance, for business owners who are retailers, wholesalers,
or merchants who otherwise sell "property" (essentially, products
that you can pick up and move), they...
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I read an
interesting
blog
post by Thomas Klein of
Sand Hill Group this week on
the evolution and future of enterprise software.
Klein states that a new wave of enterprise software has emerged and
is “pulsating through the economy” and venture capital will soon
take notice. The new platform is marked principally by SaaS
and cloud computing. The industry visionaries are referring
to this new era of enterprise software as Enterprise 3.0.
I found Klein's summary of the history of enterprise...
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For anyone involved in
blogging or interested in information technology law or Internet
privacy law, there is a strange case with some important lessons
which was handed down by the District Court Western District of
Kentucky last week. The case is
Yoder v.
University of Louisville, 2009 WL 2406235 (W.D. Ky. Aug. 3,
2009).
The opinion is summarized well by Eric Goldman on the
Technology & Marketing
Blog.
Nina Yoder was a University of Louisville nursing student. She
posted a blog post to MySpace...
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About
three weeks ago I wrote a post addressing some of my concerns
regarding the
rumored state budget cut to innovation and entrepreneurship
initiatives. Sadly, the state legislatures decided to cut
innovation funding substantially.
On July 1 the budget for Indiana's 21st Century Research and
Technology Fund was cut by $35 million over the next two
years. This is an extremely short sighted move. It has
a negative impact on both attracting and promoting growth for
emerging technology...
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Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act (
47
USC 230), entitled “Protection for private blocking and
screening of offensive material”, is an important federal statute
for any interactive computer service provider. As a
technology lawyer, my law practice largely focuses on SaaS law,
software licensing law and Internet based businesses, this statute
impacts several of my clients.
The statute essentially provides protection for providers of
interactive computer services against information...
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This is an exciting
week at
Alerding Castor, LLP.
The biggest news is the addition of Brian Hewitt as a named partner
of our firm - to take effect on June 28. Brian is coming from
Williams Hewitt Barrett & Wilkowski, and practices in
business law, commercial law, estate planning, banking law, probate
and business litigation and mediation. Brian is a rock star
attorney and a big land for our firm! We are very excited to
have him as a partner.
I am leaving today on a three day trip to New York...
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The National Association of Seed
and Venture Funds (NASVF), a national organization of public and
private equity firms and private equity investors, released a study
this week of 5,000 early stage funds and providers that support
young entrepreneurial companies and found that State level funding
for these companies is dire.
According to NASVF’s press release:
The survey found that the vast
majority of young innovative companies across the United States –
the emerging Microsofts, Ciscos, Apples...
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Negotiation
strategies are often quite similar to interrogation
strategies. “Clock Negotiation” is a process often used by
large companies with deep pockets and bureaucracy when dealing with
smaller companies with lesser pockets.
The goal of the large company is to send contract negotiations
through multiple stages of review – with each stage going to a
different division or office of the company. In each stage
following the first, the officer will chip away more and more at
the terms or...
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I am attending a conference this week in San
Francisco on Intellectual Property licensing. It may sound
boring, but I find this stuff amazing – cutting edge cultural
initiatives. To my knowledge, I am the only private-practice
Indianapolis attorney who focuses on
Software
as a Service (SaaS) and software licensing fields (of course, I
also help clients in other business law fields, but a majority of
my practice is in these technology areas).
With this narrow focus and my lack of competition...
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I have been blown away by Microsoft's recent "
I'm a PC"
commercials. This past year Apple launched its "Buy a Mac"
advertising campaign which features a series of TV commercials with
two characters. You have seen it. On the right side of
the blank white set is the young, hip guy representing a Mac; on
the left is the bumbling, office nerd representing a
PC.
For years Mac has branded itself as counter to the
PC. In its recent campaign Mac represents PC as the
mainstream, the stereotype, the...
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