Startups, Early Stage Ventures & the Innovation Economy
Shine a spotlight on the legal hazards facing startups and unveil the key strategies you need to know to profitably help entrepreneurs navigate through the start-up period. Gain insight into the current startup and entrepreneurial landscape in Australia and how to commercialise startups. Take a dive into key investment concepts and legal document must haves. Plus gain tips and practical guidance on structuring, tax, intellectual property and data breach response plans. WEB216N08
Description
Attend the full day and earn 6 CPD units including:
3 CPD units in Substantive Law
3 CPD units in Professional Skills
This program is applicable to practitioners from all States & Territories
Session 1
Commercialising, Investing and Startup Documentation
Chair: Professor Natalie Stoianoff, Director of the Intellectual Property Program, Faculty of Law, UTS
9.00am to 9.05am Opening Comments by the Chair
Professional Skills
9.05am to 9.50am Understanding the Startup and Entrepreneurial Landscape in Australia
- Startups: the key to unlocking what’s possible in Australia
- Australia’s entrepreneurial ‘desert’ and the ramifications of not having the capital of other countries & regions
- Bridging the gap: the economic & business benefits of encouraging more entrepreneurs
- Case study: growing the number of startups coming out of UTS and nurturing Ultimo precinct’s vibrant startup environment
- Encouraging business to reach out to universities to solve technology challenges, commercialise solutions
Presented by Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit, UTS
Professional Skills
9.50am to 10.35am A Guide to Commercialising Startups & Innovation in Australia
- How Australia can commercialise its startups and technology development
- Building product that can get to market
- The role for universities and corporates
- What goes wrong for founders, entrepreneurs and investors: war stories
- The key elements of success stories
- Identifying the things that are best performing
- Finding ways to address employee workplace considerations
- Dealing with gaps in tech (energy tech, green tech, etc)
Presented by Peter Dunne, Partner, Herbert Smith Freehills; Best Lawyers 2021, Private Equity Law
10.35am to 10.45am Break
10.45am to 11.30am Early Stage Startup Investment and Capital Raising Options
- Why are startups raising funds and what are their objectives?
- Look at the big picture and ways to raise funds
- Why issuing equity to investors may not be right for startups
- Startups: Be prepared
- School up on key investment concepts
- Get your house in order before you raise
- Allow lots of time
- Key investment and legal concepts for equity issues
Presented by Brad Vinning, Partner, Sparke Helmore Lawyers; Recommended Business & Commercial Lawyer, Doyle’s Guide 2020
11.30am to 12.15pm The Top 10 Legal Documents Recommended for All Startup Clients
- Why startups need governance and to manage risk
- What legal documents are must haves for startups on a tight budget and why are they important?
- Traps with using off the shelf and free online products
Presented by Taryn Hartley, Principal, McInnes Wilson Lawyers
Session 2
Spotlight on Structuring, Tax, Privacy and IP Strategy
Chair: Marc Orchard, Director of Startups, BDO
1.00pm to 1.05pm Comments by the Chair
1.05pm 1.45pm Structuring and Tax: Tips and Traps for New Businesses
- Key structuring and tax issues affecting startups
- Incentives available for corporations
- Tips and practical guidance
Presented by Ben Gouldson, Director, Clifford Gouldson Lawyers
Professional Skills
1.45pm to 2.30pm Critical Research & Development Tax Incentives
- What constitutes R&D from a legal and tax standpoint?
- R&D tax incentives and the current focus on ‘experimental’ activities rather than innovation
- What are the current R&D tax offsets
- Understanding the old regime vs the new regime coming into effect from 1 July 2021
- Checklist of what AusIndustry requires and the documentation companies need to prepare and keep in order to receive R&D tax incentives
Presented by Todd Fielding, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fielding Advisory
2.30pm to 2.40pm Break
2.40pm to 3.25pm Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Breach Response Plans for Startups
- Privacy issues
- Cybersecurity and data breach response plans: the ‘must haves’
- Tips and traps
Presented by Claudia Hall, Senior Associate, Allens
3.25pm to 4.10pm Tips for Building an Intellectual Property Strategy for a Startup
IP issues are among the most important considerations that a startup will encounter. It is vital to start early when evaluating IP assets and start firm when implementing protection strategies.
Topics will include:
- Approaching IP protection from a global perspective
- The long-term benefits of using Asset Registers for IP, including disclosure schedules
- Commercialisation of IP and offensive strategies
Presented by Ben Gouldson, Director, Clifford Gouldson Lawyers
4.10pm to 4.15pm Final Q+A and Closing Comments
Presenters
Professor Natalie Stoianoff, Director of the Intellectual Property Program, Faculty of Law, UTS
Natalie Stoianoff is a Professor and Director of the Intellectual Property Program at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, since 2008. She is the Chair of the Indigenous Knowledge Forum Committee, member of the UTS Commercialisation Advisory Panel, and is currently Co-convenor of the Technology and Intellectual Property Research Cluster and past convenor of the China Law Research Group. She has had industry funding to investigate the Role of Patent Protection in Key Australian Industries and the Contribution to Economic Development (2010-12), and led an Indigenous Knowledge Forum project on Recognising and Protecting Indigenous Knowledge associated with Natural Resource Management (2013-14), funded by the Aboriginal Communities Fund of the North West Local land Services. She is the author of numerous publications including: a co-author of the Federation Press publication, Intellectual Property Law: Text and Essential Cases, adopted by several Australian universities and now in its fifth edition; editor of and author in the multidisciplinary book, Accessing Biological Resources, Complying with the Convention on Biological Diversity, published in 2004 by Kluwer Law International Environmental Law and Policy Series; and currently the managing editor of the newly formed Lexis Nexis series for the Indigenous Knowledge Forum.
Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit, UTS
Murray Hurps is the Director of Entrepreneurship for UTS, leading the work of the University to inspire and support technology-enabled entrepreneurs. Australia’s recovery needs job-ready graduates, productivity-boosting research, and new entrepreneurs spreading innovations, creating new jobs and driving our recovery. Murray’s work is enabling this critical third pillar of work at UTS. Before building the largest community of student-launched startups at UTS, Murray was CEO of Fishburners, growing it from 100 desks of startup space, to 750 across Sydney, Brisbane and Shanghai, and supporting 508 startups during this time. He founded Startup Muster, the largest survey of Australian startups for five years, reviewing a few thousand Australian startups each year. He founded FUELD, Westpac’s data-focused accelerator program. He’s been a Director of the Australian Information Industry Association, Spark Festival and WorkVentures, all in support of Australian technology-enabled entrepreneurs. He does what he does because at 16 he founded Ad Muncher, an ad-blocking startup that grew for 14 years, to a peak of 100 million active users.
Peter Dunne, Partner, Herbert Smith Freehills
Peter has advised on multibillion-dollar transactions, including acquisitions, buy-outs, disposals, joint ventures and recapitalisations, involving some of Australia’s largest public and private organisations. Peter has extensive experience in equity and debt capital raisings, debt financing, management and leveraged buy outs, and trade sale & IPO exits. His understanding of private equity and venture capital, in conjunction with public markets expertise and M&A credentials provides significant competitive advantage to clients. He has worked with a number of private equity houses on the disposal of portfolio investments and has been involved in leveraged acquisition market, advising both private equity houses and leveraged financiers on the financing aspects of many landmark transactions. Peter also assisted the Federal Government on its reforms to the federal tax system to facilitate startup capital raisings and employee share schemes.
Brad Vinning, Partner, Sparke Helmore Lawyers
Brad is a real “people person” who thrives on knowing that he is making a positive impact for his clients. It didn’t take Brad long to realise that the value a corporate and M&A lawyer brings to his clients reaches beyond legal answers: it is about connecting people, exceeding expectations from a service perspective and being able to offer an opinion steeped in more than 17 years of experience in commercial law firms in Australia, the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands (Jersey). Brad has been recommended in the Doyles Guide for leading commercial lawyers in Queensland on 2018, 2019 and 2020. The Brisbane start-up ecosystem has consistently benefitted from Brad’s enthusiasm to help emerging start-ups and entrepreneurs navigate early stage capital raisings and legal issues.
Taryn Hartley, Principal, McInnes Wilson Lawyers
Taryn Hartley is a Principal at McInnes Wilson Lawyers' Brisbane office. Taryn practises in the firm's Corporate and Commercial Advisory Team and advises clients on a range of matters including stakeholder agreements, business sale and purchase transactions, direct and indirect tax, debt and equity instruments, capital raising and M&A and a wide range of other corporate and commercial matters.
Marc Orchard, Director of Startups, BDO
Marc Orchard is the Director of Startups with BDO in Brisbane. He is passionate about helping world class entrepreneurs creating the exceptional companies of tomorrow. Marc’s goal is to create the professional service firm that startups always wished they had, and position BDO as the #1 professional service firm for startups and scaleups in Australia. Marc is the founder of our “BDO for Startups” program, Australia’s first professional service offering built specifically for startups. The BDO for Startups team are committed to helping early stage, high growth companies survive the ‘trough of sorrow’ and create successfully, global facing companies. This program is being beta tested in our Brisbane office, before a national roll out in 2020. Marc joined BDO in 2018 and was previously the Brisbane City Manager of Fishburners, and CEO of his own Financial Planning firm VEVA Wealth Management.
Ben Gouldson, Director, Clifford Gouldson Lawyers
Ben is a Director of Clifford Gouldson Lawyers, and a well-known and trusted advisor to many Toowoomba, Queensland and national businesses over his more than two decades in the legal industry. With a breadth of experience across multiple practice areas, Ben’s expertise is unrivaled. Whether in workplace law, corporate advisory, export advisory, intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, construction law or tax, structures and estate planning, Ben’s capacity to see the big picture and guide clients to simple solutions for complex legal problems makes him a highly sought after legal practitioner.
Todd Fielding, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fielding Advisory
Todd has been a senior R&D tax partner at both KPMG and Deloitte with over 25 years R&D tax experience. He recently retired from Deloitte in early 2019 to set up his own R&D and tax consultancy practice. Todd has extensive experience assisting clients in all aspects of the R&D Tax Incentive and Export Market Development Grants. He has assisted clients with the preparation of R&D tax incentive applications, project documentation and AusIndustry and ATO reviews and audits. Fielding Advisory’s clients range from both small start-ups to large multinationals with R&D projects from $50,000 to over $50m. Todd is a registered tax agent with the Tax Practitioners Board and is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Tax Institute of Australia, and NSW Mineralogical Society. Todd was nominated in 2016 for Australian Mining Prospect Awards – Contribution to Mining and has been a judge for the Australian Technology Competition.