Royse Law Firm | Roger Royse

 

About Roger Royse

Roger Royse, the founder of the Royse Law Firm, works with companies ranging from newly formed tech startups to publicly traded multinationals in a variety of industries, including technology, entertainment and new media, sports, real estate and agri-business. Roger regularly advises on complex tax structuring, high stakes business negotiations and large international financial transactions. Practicing business and tax law since 1984, Roger’s background includes work with prominent San Francisco Bay area law firms as well as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy in New York City.

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Roger Royce. He is the founder of Royce Law firm. Roger, welcome to today’s show. Thanks,

Roger
Alan. Good to be back.

Alan
So Roger, I understand that. Your firm was recently named as one of the top law firms in Silicon Valley.

Roger
The San Jose Silicon Valley Business Journal. They haven’t. And you’ve heard of the book lists, and they have an annual list of law firms. And it’s been a year ago now that we finally made the list. We’ve been growing pretty quickly since I formed a firm about eight years ago. And we’re up to 20. Lawyers now, in all different areas of practice for small business and startup companies.

Alan
Now your firm specializes in you deal with a lot of lot of companies, but you have a niche practice and allow the startups

Roger
A big part of what we do is startup company and emerging growth primarily because our main offices in Palo Alto, but also because we have a pretty deep bench and technology, law, corporate securities, m&a and financings. So yeah, I would say a pretty big part of the practice has to do with startups.

Alan
Have been right in the heart of Silicon Valley, can you give us a feel for what’s happening out there right now? We’re down the street with the companies.

Roger
Well, it’s, you know, everything goes in cycles in California, this part of California anyway, has its own little cycle, its own little bubble that seems to be immune from the rest of the world to some extent. And you could call what’s going on right now to be a bit frothy. There’s lots of companies are getting funded, lots more are being formed. And there seems to be a lot more money in the market chasing those companies than there have been in recent years. So it’s a it’s a pretty good environment. For for startup companies. Right now.

Alan
We talk about funding companies that, you know, currently, the new trend is in crowd funding.

Roger
That’s a big deal. That’s what we’ve been hearing a lot of. And we’re certainly one of the pioneers in terms of understanding the new laws, and, and doing presentations, conferences and white papers on In fact, I was at in Washington, DC last fall at the SEC when they finalized regulations on one aspect of the Jobs Act. But it’s important to know there’s there’s as much misinformation as information about the crowdfunding rules out there right now. But nevertheless, we have had some recent law changes and a freed up billions of dollars for startup investment that wasn’t there before. And we’re seeing the effects of that the business models and the technology is catching up to the law. And there are certainly several websites and portals and help facilitate angel investing under the new crowdfunding rules.

Alan
As an attorney, how do you help your clients to the crowdfunding and legal documents there? Is there any special process that you walk them through.

Roger
There’s no shortage of lawyers in Palo Alto, and there is no shortage of good lawyers. In fact, almost anybody can, it’s not hard to walk up and down page railroad, or Embarcadero where I am and find somebody who can can help a company with the legal aspects of a securities placement. But here in Silicon Valley, we try to take a little bit more of an expansive role. And it’s not just so much, you know, how do we dot i’s and cross T’s? I think there’s a lot more strategy that has to be involved. And in fact, a lot of the speaking and presentations that I give are part of the legal aspects. And I’m a lawyer, so part of my day is law. But another part of strategy, who do you want as your investors? Do what how much money should you get? Should you stage your financing? Should be you’d be doing a crowdfunding? Or should you be going right to the institutions? It’s things like that. I mean, that’s where lawyers add a lot of value to a process, much more than just shuffling paper.

Alan
You know, from your perspective, what is the future hold for crowdfunding.

Roger
We are eventually going to see that democratization of the process, I think that we are going to see a lot more players entering the market in terms of investors, angel investors, and having a lot of access to a lot of great companies. And that’s going to necessarily increase the quality of the companies that are going to get funded, who’s just going to be more competition. There’s more money, more competition for that money, because it’s a lot easier for companies to get out there and get in front of them now. So I think crowdfunding is as technology has done in a lot of different areas. It for crowdfunding, it’s going to allow people to connect from places where they might not have been able to connect in a rural world before.

Alan
At what point of time, is it appropriate for a startup company get involved with an attorney?

Roger
Well, I think as soon as possible, of course, certainly. At the point that the company is going to engage in it Any conduct so it can do some asset protection, any business conduct business activities that might result in liability. And this is California. So it doesn’t take much to result in liability, as you know, at the point where it’s going to be creating any intellectual property, broadly defined technology, trade secrets, anything like that, because we need a vehicle that can collect those rights, and at the point where it’s going to divide up equity, or make arrangements with with other stakeholders, founders, advisors, consultants, things like that, and that any of those things that are going to happen pretty early in an enterprise’s life, so I think a company needs a lawyer pretty early.

Alan
And visiting here today with Roger Royce, he is the founder of the rice Law Group, right here in Silicon Valley, Roger, we need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Roger rice. And he’s a founder of the rice law group right here in Silicon Valley, ranked by the Silicon Valley Business Journal is one of the top law firms here. Roger, recently, you held a pitch event, you know that here in Silicon Valley for new startup companies coming in? Can you give us more information? How did that go and, and give us some background on the company that shut up.

Roger
I do that fairly frequently. Because one of the I spend a pretty big part of my day, with my client companies asking me to introduce them to investors. And and maybe I can do that. But with a pitch event, you’ve got a captive audience of investors as judges, they’re gonna listen to you, they’re gonna give you your chance to tell them about your company, anywhere from, you know, one or two minutes to five minutes. And then if they’re interested, they’ll ask follow up questions. That’s the beauty of a pitch event. So we do that periodically, it gives everybody an opportunity, that that we lead into the pitch event to actually get in front of these companies. The one we did recently, was a little bit different concept, we opened it up to anybody who wanted to sign up, but they only had one minute to tell their story. We had 60 companies come over we had a panel from from garage from Draper Fisher from angels forum. And, and dream funded SF Angel. So we had a pretty, pretty powerful panel of investors. And we had 60 companies come through with their one minute pitches. So it was quite a it was quite an evening. And several of them came back were invited back to give an extended pitch. And several of them I know have been contacted by the investors and they followed up and we’ll see what happens out of that.

Alan
How innovative by these companies coming out? What are their trends that you’re seeing, we’re in.

Roger
The heart of innovation here in Silicon Valley, I think and that’s that’s the best thing about the pitch events, if you’re in the audience, or if you’re moderating, like I usually do is just to see all the new ideas. And the the companies, the types of companies that we see is limited only by the imaginations of creative people. It’s amazing some of the things that they come.

Alan
Up with, how do you bring an event like that to fruition?

Roger
Well, first, you have to live a long time. So you know, a lot of people, you have to be in the Valley for a long time. But But fortunately, we’re in an area where there’s there’s no shortage of companies that would like to get in an audience and would like to pitch so that part tends to be the easy part. We’re also in a place where there’s really no shortage of investors, but there are a lot of demands on their time. So they need to know that, that their their time is worthwhile is being spent in a way that’s productive, and that they’re gonna see some high quality companies. And that just requires having done this again and again and again. And then we put it out there. And it’s it’s actually not that hard.

Alan
So Roger for the future. Sounds like you’re gonna do these again. Yeah, absolutely. And as a person learn more about upcoming advances or newsletters that you have?

Roger
Well, I don’t hide, pretty easy to find, but we post all of these events on our websites, Roycelaw.com. We also have a resource site called rice university.com where we put content because a lot of our a lot of what we do is technical, legal and business content. And we collected all in this one online library And then thirdly are cite Royce link, Li and K Royce link.com, which is where we announced most of these activities. So you can find any of these you can you can Google it, you know, you Google my name, you’ll see all sorts of events.

Alan
And basically here today with Roger Royce, he is the founder of the rice Law Group. Right here in the heart of Silicon Valley. We’ve been talking about startup companies and Roger, we need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back are these messages and I want to get more into, you know, the trends in the valley and what we see coming up. Okay, we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Roger Royse. He is the founder of the Royse law group right here in Silicon Valley. Roger, we’ve been talking about startup companies and crowdfunding and and you know, how companies get launched here in the valley. There’s, there’s a key and a secret sauce that you found in networking, and marketing? What what are you? What, what’s your perspective and viewpoint? How does it person effectively network here? In order to establish a good solid company and growth? And what have you? What steps have you taken to help create your network?

Roger
You know, it’s funny, you should ask me that as I was driving over here this morning, I was listening to some songs on my my, my iPhone, and I was listening to the song by Lady Gaga. I mean, don’t ask me how that got on my iPhone, I don’t even know. But I had this thought it occurred to me and says, you know, Lady Gaga has something in common with Barack Obama. And with me, because we’ve all created this community using pretty much the same process, the same pattern. And that pattern has to do with with with exposure, a fan base, it has to do with with expertise and establishing that expertise. And it has to do with with very targeted sort of high level communities. And here in Silicon Valley, we really have the advantage of having access to a lot of networking opportunities. And, like I say, it’s really those three things, its exposure, and its expertise and its brand. And every startup company ought to follow that formula. And the successful ones do as well, if you look around at big brands, and big companies, you’ll notice they do tend to follow the same sort of pattern, they just run that play again and again, as long as it works. So I think startup companies here, when I first came to this valley out in 1991, I remember my boss, he said to me, he says, you know, he says I think you ought to be doing five business lunches, and five business dinners a week, and which, which is kind of a lot. But the point being that you really have to work and you have to put yourself out there and you have to be at a lot of these events. And you could very easily in Silicon Valley, go to that many events every week, and you could meet a ton of people. And there is some value in that. That’s working hard, I think there’s a lot more value into being a little smart about it, where you go. And once you put out in there’s a lot more value about working right. And just making sure that you’re connecting with the right people, and getting in front of the right people and using your time wisely. So that that’s it at a high level, the drill down a little bit, I think that the events that we do, are really important. In fact, we have one coming up, I’m speaking on Thursday evening at hacker dojo in Mountain View, for a meetup group called idea to IPO on startup basics, where we’ll talk about, it’s sold out almost immediately. And we’re trying to get a bigger space. So we might have to move that. But those are great events. Because you meet a lot of startup companies, you meet a lot of advisors, you meet a lot of people that are doing what you’re doing or know people that might know. So, so part of it is just getting out and going to some of the events that we’re able to do in Silicon Valley. The other part is having those private one on one meetings with the super connectors, such as yourself and people who really can connect you with the people that you need to know. So don’t get me started on this topic. I’ll talk all day long.

Alan
But it is true. It’s all about working smarter, rather than harder. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so when we talk about your company, you’re now at 20 attorneys. We’re about 2020 You’ve really put a process in place that you’re and as strong. You have some of the premier attorneys coming in joining your group. Absolutely. But let me talk in terms of the direction you see for Royce Law Group, where do you see yourself, you know, within a three to five year range, keep on growing you like the size that you’re at.

Roger
I think we can probably just continue to do what we’ve been doing, I see continued growth. Five years from now I expect we’ll be at 30 lawyers, at least, we may double by then there’s plenty of room in this valley to grow, as well as our other offices, we have offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles that are pretty busy. I think Los Angeles is a place that is that could be a little better served by the legal community. So I go down there a lot. And I’m building that office. And it’s probably the next thing. We’ve looked into other areas of Central Valley, Sacramento, even Las Vegas, that we’re in discussions with possibly expanding into other states. So I see us expanding and doing our core business, and new geographies and a new markets.

Alan
You know, it’s a competitive landscape for there’s a lot of attorneys out there. But But you found a secret sauce in terms of delivering a value added service to the new entrepreneurs, let me ask a new new entrepreneur comes to your company, what advice do you typically give them off the bat when they’re saying, Roger, I’m just starting out? What do I need to know.

Roger
So you know, brain scientists will tell you that it’s really hard for a person to hold two competing thoughts in their head at the same time. And when somebody walks into my office with a great idea, they’re thinking about upside, they’re thinking about all the success they’re gonna have, and they’re gonna go IPO and three years used to be one year, but now it’s three, you’re gonna get them and VCs are just gonna love them once they see them. And I really do have to temper that a little bit, and say, That’s all great. I don’t doubt you a bit. I’m sure it’s all going to work out that way. But we really need to plan a little bit for the downside, just in case, this particular idea doesn’t work out. So number one, let’s not put off good legal structure and having good legal bones. Let’s you know, have some asset protection by forming a company around what you do. Let’s make sure that the people that you bring in are not entrenched. If it turns out that they don’t work out and are not the right people. It’s make sure that you can pivot easily if you have to. And let’s make sure that if you’re going to fail, you fail fast. So you can start over with something else. And that’s kind of what we as lawyers have to do. I see a whole lot more failures, and I see successes. And we need to plan for that. Roger.

Alan
Quickly, what are some lessons to contact you how they go about binding waste Law Group.

Roger
Were on the web, www.Royselaw.com Just google me and and we’ll come up.

Alan
Welcome back, I’ve been visiting with Roger Royse. And during the break, I talked to Roger about his next big project I’d like to I asked him if he to stay we can talk about it. The last time he’s on the plane. He was talking about the book that he recently wrote called Dead on arrival. It’s an excellent book. You can get this on Amazon. Absolutely. It’s on Amazon dead on arrival. It’s how you can avoid the legal mistakes that could kill your startup. So But Roger, I’d like to talk about what is your next big project right now? What are you currently working on?

Roger
We have a couple things I’d like to mention. The big one is our EGRA tech conference coming up on May 12. in Palo Alto, that’s technology companies focused on the agriculture industry. Something I’ve been interested in for quite a long time coming like you coming from an agricultural state and also doing work both in the tech field as well as an in the agriculture related field. So a couple years ago, I formed a group here in Silicon Valley called Silicon Valley Ag tech. We’re doing our first conference on May 12. It and we’ve just gotten a tremendous response to this. We haven’t even really marketed it much. But people have found us we’ve we’ve got over 100 paid signups attendees so far. We’ve got tech companies, we’ve got established companies, large a companies to small tech companies. A really good panels and presenters, of course, a pitch you know, pitch session got about a dozen ag tech companies pitching to I think the panel of VCs and investors is bigger than the panel and pitchers, we got about a dozen of them are going to be any audience looking, we’re looking for the next big thing. And ag Tech, we have companies coming from all over the world, we have a company for New Zealand coming out here to here to pitch at our conference, we have a company from Ireland coming. And we’ve gotten calls from from several other countries. So this is going to be a really, really great conference.

Alan
What’s the trend in ag tech right now?

Roger
See, that’s a great thing. It’s such a broad field, we’re seeing robotics, for example. That are helping create efficiencies in in things like controlling crop crop yields, and efficiency, you know, water, pesticides, things like that. The big thing in my mind, no, for me, what I’m really interested in is the idea of big data and ag tech, because there’s a lot of legal issues around that. Because typically, traditionally, back where I grew up, a farmer could farm only about as much land as he can remember. In other words, he kind of had to know what area the land needs water and what needs a little more of this and where the sand in the soil is Sandy, and where it’s rocky stuff like that. Well, there are tools now that will help them do that. So that means that these farmers can actually farm much, much bigger plots. That’s one aspect of it. So So data is one the other thing is just collecting that data and using that data, and there’s a lot of legal issues around who owns it, who has a right to privacy is a trade secret. How can we protect it. And that’s the legal side of what’s going on in that aspect of the industry. Water Of course, as big as you know, we’re in a drought and water conservation is important. And we actually have somebody coming from CFDA that is going to talk about water conservation technologies, someone from the state. So hopefully, we’ll see some companies that will jump on this and see this as an opportunity to to, to do something to promote sustainability here in California where we have a water shortage.

Alan
Sometimes water seems to be a big issue here. Roger, for a person wanting to get more information. It sounds like you just have a few more slots left on the Ag tech conference. But where would they go to get more information to get signed up.

Roger
Silicon Valley Ag tech, so ag tech sp.com. We’re all over the world wide web.

Alan
I’ve been visiting here today with Roger Royse. He’s the founder of the Royse Law Group, one of the top law firms here in Silicon Valley, focused on startups and helping companies get to the next level. Roger, thanks for being on today’s show. Thank you, Alan.

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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