Alerding
Castor Hewitt, LLP is proud to announce the addition of Indiana
technology lawyer Bill Boncosky to the firm.
The former General Counsel for ExactTarget, Bill has tremendous
experience as technology counsel for one of the most successful
technology start ups based right here in the heart of
Indianapolis. A company that had just over a dozen employees
when he joined, Bill has substantial experience in licensing
agreement negotiations, ASP Law and Cloud Computing Law serving in
that role...
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Closing
in on the end of 2009 I have to say that I am quite pleased
with the commitment Indiana showed this year to be a State that
supports and promotes innovation, entreprenuership and business
growth.
This week I had breakfast with Larry O'Connor, Executive Director
of
Butler
University's Business Accelerator. Larry is a former CEO
of Bank One Indiana. Following his "retirement", Larry became
CEO of The IndianapolisMuseumm of Art, and recently took the
position to lead theAcceleratorr...
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The other day I wrote a post on my reasons not to use the term
"affiliates" in licensing agreement negotiations.
See post here. My
general point is that the term has no common meaning in the law and
may create ambiguity in the contact.
I addressed several different definitions of the term in laws, but
the term is not only defined differently in law, it is also used
differently in business.
For accounting companies, for instance, the Interstate Commerce
Commission defines the term as companies...
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There are several scope of license issues to work through when
handling license agreement negotiations. In my SaaS law (SaaS
legal consulting) practice I often see licensees wanting to open
the scope of the license to its “affiliates”.
For many larger SaaS customers this makes sense as these businesses
often operate as families of companies rather than single operating
entities. The customer may need to open the license to its
other companies in order to properly use the software. Just
last...
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New technology businesses usually face two hurdles to get their
product to market. The first is proof of concept. The
second is proof of scale.
Both are intended to solve the “Ability” stage of the business plan
process and move the business into the "Meeting" stage:
Recognition of Market ->
Recognition of Market Opportunity -> Ability to Meet Market
Opportunity -> Meeting Market Opportunity at Profit
Proof of concept is simply the proof that the business can develop
a working prototype that...
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What are your metrics for business success? I attended a
non-profit board meeting this past week where the directors were
working through this question - "How do we measure
success?"
A common metric that was discussed was # of volunteers in the
organization in ___ years. Although this metric does
measure growth, it does not measure the quality of growth.
What if the volunteers are under committed, under trained or
just plain lousy at their job? You may meet your metric but
find that your...
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There are several business blogs that I follow. Most of these
are written by SaaS law / Internet law clients of mine or other
Indiana businesses in technology industries. Lately I have
been falling behind on them. This morning I am trying to
catch up.
I came across a very good, brief video on
Kristian Andersen + Associates'
blog.
The video is from the Bigger Ideas/Smaller Indiana conference this
past summer. In the video Kristian Andersen shares his
feelings on central Indiana's business...
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Here
at Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP, often times we work with clients
who have software that inherently transcends state and national
borders.
Not just brick and mortor storefronts, many of our clients
have customers nationwide and around the world.
Such is the realm of cloud computing law, and it's up to us as
technology legal counsel to answer the inescapable question of what
state, federal, or even country's law applies should a lawsuit
arise.
Well, if you haven't contracted for this simple...
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The following post by Pat Horgan
of Palidan Associates was printed on the
E-Sourcing Forum a couple of weeks ago. Even
though the post applies particularly to sourcing professionals, the
concepts are excellent for most contract negotiations.
NEGOTIATING TIPSContract Document Control
In contract development, the party that controls the physical
production of the contract document and the wording changes during
negotiations generally has a distinct advantage. This is
particularly true in long or...
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According to a recent
Gartner research report, worldwide SaaS
revenues are expected to grow 18 percent in 2009 to reach $7.5
billion. The report further stated an expectation for SaaS
industries through 2013 when worldwide revenues are expected to top
$14 billion for enterprise application markets.
Gartner listed the top SaaS market segments for 2009 as
follows:
1. Content, Communications and
Collaboration (CCC) - $2.6 billion
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - $2.3 billion
3. Enterprise...
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From time to time I use the term
“From a 10,000 foot view…”. This is corporate buzz speak for
taking a broad look at something without getting into the
details. From a business vision and strategy perspective, it
is common to start at a high and broad perspective and then work
down to the details (i.e., "into the weeds").
Many business professors, and even our President, encourage
business executives to stop using such buzz phrases as they can
serve as a crutch for intelligent decision making...
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I had the honor of
speaking at the
Masters of Business Online conference this last
week. The conference was organized by Jim Brown of
EverEffect.
Jim and his team did a great job with the event. Last count I
heard was approximately 250 in attendance.
Here are a few blog posts that described the event:
My hour presentation was entitled "The Legal Landscape of Corporate
Blogging". I...
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This is the second part of a four
part series from the
SpendMatters blog
on the rise of
Iasta as a global leader in
eSourcing markets. The article is by Jason Busch, a Founder
and Managing Director of Azul Partners, a boutique advisory firm.
He is also Editor of the highly trafficked sourcing, trade and
supply chain blog
www.spendmatters.com.
Jason is regarded as one of the leading technology pundits and
thought leaders in the trade, procurement and operations
worlds.
I recently just completed...
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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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This is part II of a
repost of an article by Robert Ambrogi on the
IMS Expert
Services blog (here is a link to the
first post). These are
unbelievable stories of actual cases and situations where
attorneys, judges and jurors posted blog articles and shared
stories on social media sites which got them in trouble.
Amazing - and funny.
7. When jurors
tweet
After jurors in an Arkansas case awarded a verdict of $12.6 million
against a building materials company, one juror boasted on Twitter,
"I just...
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The TechPoint
Innovation Summit 2009 is finally here. I have been
looking forward to this event this year (which has not necessarily
been the case in past years).
This year's focus is more tailored to helping seed and emerging
stage Indiana technology companies pursue excellence in developing
their innovation, marketing their innovation and seeking funding
for their innovation. As an Indiana tech lawyer these topics
hit right at heart of the needs I have wrestled through with
my clients.
I...
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I read an interesting post
yesterday on
Small Business Trends by Professor Scott Shane,
Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve
University. It is a good read for current entrepreneurs and
those daring to dream of starting their own company.
Here is the post:
Most entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about financing new
companies that hinder their efforts to raise money. Here are a
few:
Myth 1: It takes a lot of money to finance a new
business. Not true. The typical...
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I recently discovered
OnStartups.com, a blog
and resource website for business start ups. The author,
Dharmesh Shah, is a software developer and entrepreneur and writes
about his experiences in living through the startup phases of a
SaaS company.
In a post this past week he writes about five simple insights he
has learned through the process of starting his own SaaS
company. Here is an excerpt:
Insights On SaaS
Startups
1. You are financing your customers.
Most SaaS businesses are...
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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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Congratulations to
Kyle Lacy on his recent publication –
Twitter Marketing for
Dummies. The book is available by pre-order. Check
out
Kyle’s blog site for pre-order
information.
Kyle summarized his book on a blog post:
In addition to covering the basics of Twitter, this
easy-to-understand guide quickly moves on to techniques for
incorporating a Twitter strategy into your marketing mix, combining
new and old media, building your network, using Twitter tools, and
measuring your success.
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