Sponsor Spotlight Interview: Partner, Corporate Law Department at Rutan & Tucker

The Rutan & Tucker law firm is an important part of the Orange County tech startup ecosystem, and a Gold Sponsor of the OC Startup Council.

Enjoy this exclusive interview with Shige Itoh, Partner in the Corporate Law Department at Rutan & Tucker, to learn more about what they do and how their work is helping local founders and startup companies succeed in Orange County.

OCSC: Who are you and what's your title?

Shige Itoh: I'm a partner in the Corporate Law Department at Rutan & Tucker. Over the past couple of years, I was the head of the Corporate Law Department.

OCSC: And what does your firm do?

Shige Itoh: We're a 110-year old full service law firm principally based out of Orange County, California with offices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. When I say full service, we provide legal services in a variety of different areas of law including corporate law, real estate law, tax, litigation, employment law, intellectual property, and government and regulatory law.

OCSC:  Where are you based personally?

Shige Itoh: I'm based out of our Costa Mesa, California office—which will soon be moving to Irvine, California in a few months.

OCSC:  And how do you work with startup companies?

Shige Itoh: I've been working with startups since I started as a lawyer in the fall of 2005.

On the legal side, we meet with entrepreneurs. We talk to them about their concept, their ideas, what they're striving to do. We help them formulate and come up with the appropriate legal entity structure to create their venture. We help them with simple paperwork in their initial stages to help them protect their ideas such as preparing nondisclosure agreements and invention assignment agreements. We help with the basic documentation to get a startup on its way.

We also provide, through my partners, various intellectual property services including filing of trademarks and patents to help startups protect their proprietary ideas and thoughts and creations.

And then on another side, I have been an active angel and startup investor also since 2005.  I've probably invested in a dozen companies or so, so far.  I've realized a few great exits, as well as experienced some of the pains of startups that did not go all the way to fruition. But that kind of comes with the territory.

OCSC:  And Rutan & Tucker works with startups raising money as well?

Shige Itoh: Yes. We have a slew of folks in communities around here that we know really well.  To the extent that we think that it's a good fit, especially for early stage companies, we share investor decks, concepts, and other information concerning our clients to a group of startup enthusiasts and investors and angels.  We try to make connections to the extent it makes sense and help them find funding, at least in the initial rounds.  We've also worked with a variety of later stage investors who might be interested in doing Series A rounds or other subsequent rounds with larger checks and more institutional money as well.

OCSC: Why have you chosen this kind of work for your career?

Shige Itoh: Well, a lot of what I do is actually mergers and acquisitions. It’s a really rewarding part of my practice to help some of my longtime time entrepreneurial clients finally extract and realize great rewards from their tireless efforts through the sale of their company. But with that said, you can't just always be selling companies

I've always been enthusiastic and interested in new technology, innovation and change. I've looked at companies that are in health sciences, bio-sciences, consumer products, software, food and beverage, and gaming, just to name a few. It's just really interesting and personally fulfilling to talk to entrepreneurs and companies that have new and innovative ideas and see where they may end up going. Working side by side with folks who are trying to take a concept to the next level is just really fun.

We hope we'll be working with our entrepreneur friends over the lifespan of their companies and helping them get an exit (to the extent that that's what the owners and other stakeholders want to realize out of the company).

OCSC:  What are some typical questions or problems that you can help startups solve?

Shige Itoh:  One thing that I really enjoy, in working with startups and many entrepreneurs, is that they are often unaware of the legal requirements and other basic legal frameworks that we lawyers, take for granted. I like the educational process of counseling clients—to be able to explain, what for many non-lawyers can be convoluted and complicated concepts, and boil those concepts down into something that's really easy for someone to understand and digest, is a rewarding process for me.

For example, a lot of startups come with ideas about hyper intricate and complicated capitalization tables, that I’m sure they read about online or through some tv show. But my whole approach for startups is to ask why make things so complicated? You don't need the complexity until we get down the road, and after some discussions, the entrepreneur totally gets it.

I see many startup founders and entrepreneurs being educated in a way or hearing something somewhere that makes them think that they need something a lot more complicated than it ends-up being what they actually need. So understanding the facts, understanding what someone's trying to accomplish, taking rather complex ideas (especially on the tax side), and boiling that down into an approach that the entrepreneur can understand and digest, that's very rewarding for me. Being helpful to young companies and their founders is what I really enjoy.

OCSC:  What are your specialties or differentiators from other firms that would make startup founders want to pick Rutan & Tucker to work with?

Shige Itoh: We obviously try to be fair and competitive on pricing. A lot of founders have a limited amount of resources in the beginning, and I understand the sensitivities relative to finding the best deal out in the market. I’ve also seen founders be attracted to firms that offer, what I unfortunately have seen as some times unrealistic, promises of introductions and abilities to attract and obtain financing.

While we're competitive with pricing and fundraising services, one important difference about Rutan & Tucker is that we are a full service law firm. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs typically are working with corporate lawyers, but soon enough, you're going to find out that you have a whole host of different legal issues that you need to be thinking about. As a founder or founding team, you need to be thinking about your own intellectual property, employees, leases, customer contracts, and many other items that implicate the law.

For example, the first time you hire a third party individual to come assist you, you now have an employee and you have to start thinking about employment issues. I've seen disputes come up with the founders early on, after it turns out that one of the founding members really wasn’t the right fit for the founder team. When threatened litigation came up with this, we were able to assist in that litigation in-house. I’ve seen a start-up lease a small little office, and 6 months later there was a need for a full set of services on the real estate side. I think a lot of firms that push corporate practices, are not as well equipped to provide the needed range of services in a cost effective manner in the various other areas where companies eventually need to get help.

OCSC:  Last question. What's the best way for startup founders to learn more and contact you?

Shige Itoh: They can always shoot me an email. My email is sitoh@rutan.com. And they can always call me in my office, which is (714) 338-1820.

And once my clients are engaged with me, they all have my cell phone number and they're able to contact me 24/7. I'm a resource to my clients, they should be using me as frequently as they want or need to. We're here to help them grow their venture.

Thanks to Shige Itoh for sharing how Rutan & Tucker works with startups here in Orange County.

And, thanks to Rutan & Tucker for their Gold Sponsorship support of the OC Startup Council and our efforts to accelerate Orange County’s tech ecosystem.

Special Offer:  $10K Legal Services Deal for OCSC Member Companies

Your startup may qualify to work with Rutan & Tucker on a discounted or deferred legal fees basis. 

Learn more here about this and other great benefits for OCSC startup company Members. 

To learn more about Rutan & Tucker, please visit their website at http://www.rutan.com.