Could My Growth Experiments Count as Dark Patterns? My growth team ran an experiment. The “no thanks” link is now grey, small, and beneath the fold. Conversion improved 11%. In our standup that read as a win. I have not stopped to consider how the same design would read in an enforcement narrative, or whether
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What Is an SBOM, and Why Is My Enterprise Buyer Asking for One? An enterprise prospect just asked for my SBOM. My engineering lead has heard the term, is fairly sure we do not have one, and is not certain what would be in it. I do not actually know what is inside my own
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Dual Licensing Open Source: Can I Give Code Away and Still Sell It? I want my code to be open source, because that is how developers find it and trust it. I also want to sell something. I have assumed those two goals just coexist on their own. I have never checked whether a decision
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Could the Apache 2.0 Patent Grant Undercut My Own Patents? My team added a dependency licensed under Apache 2.0 last Tuesday. Nobody read the license, because nobody reads Apache 2.0. Something in Section 3 of that license touches patents, and I do not actually know what it does to mine. Patents are part of how
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Does My Website Have to Honor Global Privacy Control? There is a setting some of my users have switched on in their browser telling every website they visit not to sell or share their data. They never clicked anything on my site. They may never see my cookie banner. I do not actually know whether
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Which Website Legal Documents Does My Startup Actually Need? My site has a footer with two links. One says Terms of Use, one says Privacy Policy, and both point to a document my first engineer assembled from a generator two years ago. I have always assumed they do basically the same job. I have never
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Sanctions Screening Requirements: Who Can I Actually Sell To? My product is self-serve. Anyone with a credit card can sign up from anywhere, which was the whole point of building it that way. I have never asked whether that includes people I am not allowed to sell to. US sanctions and export rules do not
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What If Kids Use My App and I Did Not Build It for Them? “We are not a kids’ app” is the answer most founders give, and they believe it. I believe it too. I have never checked whether my own support inbox already tells a different story, or what happens the moment it does.
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Am I “Selling” Data If No Money Changes Hands? I have never sold a customer list. The idea would horrify me. I do run analytics, and I do have an advertising pixel on my marketing site, because everyone does. I have always assumed that means I am in the clear. I have never actually checked
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Who Has to Disclose When They Post About My Launch? Launch week. My employees are posting. Three creators I sent free product to are posting. My advisor tweeted something generous, and my seed investor wrote a whole thread. I have no idea which of those people are legally required to disclose their connection to me,
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Is the Class Action Waiver in My Terms Actually Enforceable? Somewhere in my Terms of Use there is a paragraph, probably in capital letters, saying disputes go to binding arbitration and that users waive participation in a class action. I copied it from a company I admire. I have never actually checked whether it would
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Does the California Automatic Renewal Law Apply to My Subscription? I launched a subscription product. Signing up takes 20 seconds. Canceling takes an email to support, a reply, and sometimes a short conversation about whether the customer really wants to leave. My retention numbers probably look better for it. I have never checked whether that
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Is My Overseas Hire Actually an Employee? My best engineer lives in Portugal. I pay her monthly against an invoice, she works my hours, she is in my standups, and she has been doing it for two years. I call her a contractor. I have no idea whether her own country agrees, and I have
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CLA vs DCO: Who Owns the Code Strangers Contribute to My Project? I open-sourced my SDK. Within a month, strangers were sending pull requests, and some of them were good. I merged them. I never asked who actually owns that code, or what I am allowed to do with it. That question has been sitting
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Is My Portfolio Company’s Cash Sweep Between Subsidiaries Creating Liability I Don’t See? Every week, cash moves from my portfolio company’s foreign subsidiary into the US parent’s account. Nobody calls it a loan or a dividend. It’s just how treasury works here. That silence is the problem. If the subsidiary slides toward insolvency, or a lender starts asking hard questions, an
If Nvidia Can’t Dodge Antitrust Review, What Happens to My Own Acquisition? My Exit Isn’t a Wire Transfer I picture my exit as a wire transfer: buyer signs, buyer pays, I’m done. That picture skips the part where regulators get a say first, and deals do fall apart in that gap. On September 3, 2026, Nvidia announced it would acquire Hugging
If Nvidia Can’t Dodge Antitrust Review, What Happens to My Own Acquisition? Read More »
Do I Need an SLA for My First Enterprise Customer? The Clause Buried in the Redline Am I about to promise uptime numbers I have no way of guaranteeing? I landed my first real enterprise customer. Procurement sent back a redline, and buried in it is a Service Level Agreement (SLA): a set of promises about uptime
Do I Need an SLA for My First Enterprise Customer? Read More »
Protect your startup’s intellectual property and contracts with practical strategies to safeguard your core business assets in San Francisco and beyond.
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Can My API Vendor Cut Off My Product Without Warning? The Dependency I Didn’t Sign Up For What happens to my business if the API my product runs on disappears overnight? I built my product on top of someone else’s platform: a payments processor, an AI model, a mapping tool, a messaging service. That decision saved me months
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Can My Buyer Reprice My Deal After We Already Signed the Agreement? When “Signed” Doesn’t Mean Closed I signed the acquisition agreement. The team celebrated. My investors are already modeling the payout. Then the buyer’s lawyer calls with “concerns” about last quarter’s numbers. No one says the word “terminate.” They just want to talk about the price again. Most
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