Josh, I really like the way that you compared the role to a “consigliere that founders need and want” because of the ops experience.

In Silicon Valley, one of the things that’s become very discounted is early stage legal (stock car / standard documents, etc.). While far from a perfect comparison, having worked with Jeremy long ago while at Cooley, and now having been a Turnaround CEO for a company that since raised $10+M, GC + VP Business Dev for a multi-hundred million dollar startup, and now On-Demand General Counsel to many startups including those that have grown $1+B as the Founder of Silicon Valley Counsel | Legal + Growth for Startups, I agree with you that in the pre-VC stages especially, there is an enormous difference in what can be brought to the table as an experienced operating consiglieri (in this case legal, versus VC but pls bear with me).

It’s hard to find a growing startup that hasn’t faced the challenge of having a make/break the quarter contract stuck in the other side’s legal (esp a bigger corporate partner or university). If a week and usually much more can be taken from that closing process, that opens up the growth team to get more deals. There are similar leverage points in all aspects of the organization.

If you take a standard off-the-shelf contract approach, you will be stuck. If you take a well thought through approach, you could get the deal done in a turn or two. That’s growth hacking; it’s just usually not associated with Legal.

Likewise for founders, there are so many questions early on + there can be frictions in getting answers for that. By way of demonstration, I have listed two recent Linkedin posts (both also in Mattermark) that demonstrate even the most basic decisions have consequences throughout a startup that can be distractions or problems later — or on the upside can lead to growing faster.

Part of relating is language, attitude, approach, perspective + insight. I hope you have a moment to check out the posts. I would love to hear your thoughts whether these are the kinds of problem solving issues you had in mind.

IPO Process + Planing: Takeaways from the 2016 IPO Drought [4/7/16]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ipo-process-planning-key-takeaways-from-2016-drought-peter-szymanski?trk=mp-author-card

Employee or Consultant (When is the Founder Which?) [3/30/16]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-consultant-which-founder-when-peter-szymanski?trk=mp-author-card

Thank you for posting, best regards.