The Entrepreneur's Guide to Law and Strategy

Business Insider calls The ENTREPRENEUR’S GUIDE “perhaps the most useful business book you can ever read” and lists it among twenty-five must-read books for entrepreneurs. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S GUIDE TO LAW AND STRATEGY, 5E examines stages of starting a business -- from start-up and growth to public offering, while highlighting legal preparations and pitfalls. Cutting-edge examples show how legally astute entrepreneurs can strategically increase realizable value, deploy resources, and manage risk. The book discusses leaving your job, hiring former coworkers, competing with a former employer, workplace legislation, product liability, and bankruptcy. You examine current issues including today’s workforce in the “gig” economy, “crowdsourcing” capital and social media, computer hacking and identity theft. Legal discussion integrates with core strategic concepts, such as Porter’s Five Forces, the resource-based view of the firm, the value proposition, activities in the value chain and more.

Constance E. Bagley is a Senior Research Fellow at Yale School of Management, where she was formerly Professor in the Practice of Law and Management and a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, a Senior Lecturer in Law and Management at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a corporate securities partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP. Dr. Bagley has published articles in numerous professional journals, including the Academy of Management Review, the Harvard Business Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the American Business Law Journal, the Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, and the Cornell Journal of Public Policy. She has coauthored THE ENTREPRENEUR’S GUIDE TO LAW AND STRATEGY and authored WINNING LEGALLY: HOW MANAGERS CAN USE THE LAW TO CREATE VALUE, MARSHAL RESOURCES, AND MANAGE RISK. She has also contributed chapters to THE OXFORD HANDBOOK ON DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES and GENERAL COUNSEL IN THE 21ST CENTURY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES. She recently coauthored an article for Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2017/12/how-boards-can-reduce-corporate-misbehavior). Dr. Bagley received her JD from Harvard Law School and her AB with Honors and Distinction from Stanford University. She received an honorary doctorate in economics from Lund University in Sweden in 2011. She is a member of the Bar of New York and of the Bar of California (inactive). Dr. Bagley has also taught at the University of Connecticut School of Business and its School of Law. She is the business school coeditor of eshiplaw.org and CEO of Bagley Strategic Consulting Group LLC.

Craig E. Dauchy is a partner at Cooley LLP’s Palo Alto office, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and head of the Venture Capital practice group firm-wide. Cooley has 900 lawyers globally across 12 offices located in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, California; New York City, New York; Reston, Virginia; Washington D.C., Broomfield, Colorado; Boston, Massachusetts; Seattle, Washington; and internationally in Shanghai and London. Cooley LLP is one of the nation’s leading law firms providing counsel to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Since 2005, Cooley has been the most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public and has ranked as the number one law firm for technology and life sciences IPOs consecutively for the past three years. Cooley has represented one-third of the market share of VC-backed IPOs across all industries and has been involved in 375 public offerings, including some of the nation’s most notable securities transactions, in recent years. Cooley represents more than 325 fund manager organizations, including many of the nation’s leading institutional investors, and has been recognized as the Venture Capital Department of the Year twice by The Recorder in recent years. Mr. Dauchy has represented entrepreneurs, emerging companies, and venture capitalists in diverse industries, including medical devices, software, health care, electronics, and consumer products, for more than 30 years. In recent years, he has been recognized three times as a “Top 100 Lawyer” in California by The Daily Journal. He is a frequent lecturer on matters relating to securities law and public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and venture capital. He also serves on a number of advisory boards and boards of directors. Mr. Dauchy holds a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Stanford University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in history from Yale University. He is a member of the State Bar of California.