The Legal Sink Hole

When GroupMe started one of my responsibilities was taking care of everything legal-oriented and keeping the company organized. Around eight months into it, two financings later, and with a staff of 15 people (and growing), I was stretched too thin and getting basic paperwork out was taking me too long. I was also dealing with multiple points of contact when it came to our legal initiatives, and there were a lot of them (trademarks, patents, corporate, etc.). I found myself spending too much time (and money) on lawyers.

Around April/May we brought on Mordecai Goldstein as a consultant who essentially acted as GroupMe’s General Counsel (he was previously General Counsel at Gilt Groupe and had a good relationship with Steve). This was one of the best things we ever did at GroupMe to optimize my time. Mordecai would come in starting one half day every week, and we would ramp it up from there depending on what our needs were. What was most important was that I had a single point of contact for all things legal: HR, trademarks, patents, litigation, partner contracts, employee onboarding, etc. On top of that, he maintain and get our important files organized, backed up, and in one place. (There’s nothing worse than scrambling to get all of your docs organized for diligence during a financing and wasting cycles collecting last minute paperwork – it can also lead to a delay in closing deals.)

Bringing in Mordecai was a blessing to myself and GroupMe. It gave me the ability to focus on more important initiatives, and it gave the company a single trusted contact who could manage our legal work much better than me. Delegating these tasks was a time saver, and also a major money saver as we no longer had to expensively contract/outsource the issues we could take in house. Chances are when you’re 6-12 months into building your company, you’ll have more important things to do than worry about keeping growing stacks of paperwork organized. Two to five hours a week of help can make a world of a difference, and save you countless, priceless hours to deal with the things you do best: building your company.