Category Archives: law

Evaluating the Risks in Facebook’s IPO: Would You Invest?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

Facebook is forthcoming about the challenges of mobile: No revenue currently generated from mobile advertising; unclear how much mobile use could be monetized; failure to solve this puzzle combined with a dramatic shift toward mobile usage could be a serious problem; and they don’t control the iOS and Android platforms. Frankly, if there were one thing that persuaded me not to invest in FB at current valuations, this would be it. Continue Reading

Startup Legal Mistakes: Avoid “Janitorial” Legal Work

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Antone Johnson • 5 Comments

Guide to laying the legal foundations of a successful startup company by California lawyer Antone Johnson, Founding Principal of Bottom Line Law Group Continue Reading

Convertible Note or SAFE Financing 101 for Startups

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Antone Johnson • 5 Comments

As the amount of capital needed to launch new Internet and software ventures has decreased, deals have gotten smaller. The convertible note “bridge” structure was adapted to become the most common type of deal for “friends and family” or pre-seed financing rounds. Continue Reading

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 – Thought Leaders Ponder the “Battelle” for the Network Economy

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

This week, industry leaders, pundits, journalists and assorted hangers-on are gathering in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, one of the online industry’s most influential events. John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly moderate conversations with a long list of Web luminaries, including Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Marc Benioff, Reed Hastings, Peter Chernin, Tony Hsieh, Evan Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Ron Conway, John Doerr, and Fred Wilson. Continue Reading

Social Media Trust & Safety: “If you build it, they will abuse it”

“If You Build It, They Will Abuse It”: Social Media Trust & Safety, Risk, Fraud and Abuse

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Antone Johnson • 4 Comments

As a completely made-up statistic, assume that 0.01% of users are sociopaths or predators who cause serious damage to the community and its other members. With 10,000 users, that’s one guy. With a million, it’s a hundred people. With 100 million registered users — the scale at MySpace when I left — it’s ten thousand. That kind of math illustrates why every major consumer Internet company has an abuse team that serves as the first line of defense against all kinds of ugliness. Continue Reading