SV Market Forum

[Anonymous User]

Considering breaking-in to the SV market and wanted to get a feel for the firms.

I get the sense that Fenwick/Cooley/WSGR are the incumbents. But which firms are on the rise and which firms are on the decline? Goodwin is interesting since they're based in Boston, but growing.... Also, which firms are known for a good culture?

[Anonymous User]

Considering breaking-in to the SV market and wanted to get a feel for the firms.

I get the sense that Fenwick/Cooley/WSGR are the incumbents. But which firms are on the rise and which firms are on the decline? Goodwin is interesting since they're based in Boston, but growing.... Also, which firms are known for a good culture?

What do you want to do? Do you want to advise / exit to early stage start-ups? Work with VC? (Company-side or fund-side)? Help with M&A (buy or sell-side)? IP? Litigation? Regulatory (privacy, FinTech, CFIUS)? Capital Markets stuff (IPOs, private rounds, etc)?

[Anonymous User]

Considering breaking-in to the SV market and wanted to get a feel for the firms.

I get the sense that Fenwick/Cooley/WSGR are the incumbents. But which firms are on the rise and which firms are on the decline? Goodwin is interesting since they're based in Boston, but growing.... Also, which firms are known for a good culture?

What do you want to do? Do you want to advise / exit to early stage start-ups? Work with VC? (Company-side or fund-side)? Help with M&A (buy or sell-side)? IP? Litigation? Regulatory (privacy, FinTech, CFIUS)? Capital Markets stuff (IPOs, private rounds, etc)?

OP here: Not too sure, but thinking of company-side VC. Would be nice to know which firms has a broader range of services. Not into litigation or IP, or privacy work. Focused more on corporate/transactional

[soft blue]

I was in SV til mid 2018, so take this with a grain of salt. (I asked friends currently in SV and they said this is still true, but a necessary caveat.)

There's sort of a battle on who advises a company when it's time to get invested in by a VC. If you're young, you're probably going to rely on a shop that does a lot of "GC for startups" work -- Fenwick, Cooley, somewhat Orrick. This means that you won't just be doing VC advisory for your clients. If you're at a Series C or so / "real" money is coming in, Fenwick/Cooley/etc try their best to keep the relationship and WSGR/MoFo/bigger SF transactional shops try to get the client, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

The politics of company-side VC is complicated, both because of who should be adverse to who (i.e. You can rep Google's venture arm, which may be competing with Google's M&A arm, etc) and because VC' is a relationship business and any clients who are not all-stars will be sensitive to demanding too much and putting off those shops, especially for their next venture. This is very different if you represent a top, top startup -- where, these days, VC's are competing to give more money with less control. (Some founders see VC's as their friends, others as their enemies -- again, the politics are ... messy.)

It's instructive to think of it as two sets of shops: those that service established companies (Oracle, Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce) and those that service younger startups. There are a few groups out there that do one thing broadly (STB SV is a very finance oriented practice, there are a few patent boutiqes, a handful of places that do bet-the-young-company employee litigation, etc).

[Anonymous User]

Not OP, but what SF/SV firms would be best for regulatory work? Most of the firms I've talked to in the area seem to outsource that work to a DC satellite office.

[Anonymous User]

I was in SV til mid 2018, so take this with a grain of salt. (I asked friends currently in SV and they said this is still true, but a necessary caveat.)

There's sort of a battle on who advises a company when it's time to get invested in by a VC. If you're young, you're probably going to rely on a shop that does a lot of "GC for startups" work -- Fenwick, Cooley, somewhat Orrick. This means that you won't just be doing VC advisory for your clients. If you're at a Series C or so / "real" money is coming in, Fenwick/Cooley/etc try their best to keep the relationship and WSGR/MoFo/bigger SF transactional shops try to get the client, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

The politics of company-side VC is complicated, both because of who should be adverse to who (i.e. You can rep Google's venture arm, which may be competing with Google's M&A arm, etc) and because VC' is a relationship business and any clients who are not all-stars will be sensitive to demanding too much and putting off those shops, especially for their next venture. This is very different if you represent a top, top startup -- where, these days, VC's are competing to give more money with less control. (Some founders see VC's as their friends, others as their enemies -- again, the politics are ... messy.)

It's instructive to think of it as two sets of shops: those that service established companies (Oracle, Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce) and those that service younger startups. There are a few groups out there that do one thing broadly (STB SV is a very finance oriented practice, there are a few patent boutiqes, a handful of places that do bet-the-young-company employee litigation, etc).

There is a common misconception here. WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick are more or less peers. WSGR and MoFo are not peers. Who those three or so firms lose clients to is a real mixed bag and it tends to be 5-10 year post-IPO. Sometimes DPW or Latham may swoop a few at IPO but that's more of an anomaly recently, IMO. Goodwin is a strong player here too. Gunderson really skews smaller stage, along with Orrick. You'll see something like KLA Gates and Perkins Coie in the mix occasionally but not often.

I think if you want to represent tech companies, in any capacity, your best bet is a job at WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick/Goodwin/Gunderson.

There is not much regulatory work in SV. Most do outsource to DC offices, or in the case of a few who shall remain nameless, to other firms entirely. The business model is incorporation > funding > commercial contracts > IP strategies > employee benefits > litigation. That's the core. Obviously there's a lot of data privacy and security, sanctions and export controls, and tax advice along the way but that can be handled by relatively small teams.

Also, for example, Google still uses WSGR for a ton of stuff (so does Twitter) and Facebook still uses Fenwick for a ton of stuff. Salesforce moved to Gibson Dunn, I think, for a lot of their corporate work and Oracle uses Weil for a lot of their M&A but they all use dozens of firms. Cisco uses Fenwick for M&A, I believe. So it's not really quite so MoFo versus Fenwick, as a cursory analysis can lead it to appear.

[RedGiant]

There is a common misconception here. WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick are more or less peers. WSGR and MoFo are not peers. Who those three or so firms lose clients to is a real mixed bag and it tends to be 5-10 year post-IPO. Sometimes DPW or Latham may swoop a few at IPO but that's more of an anomaly recently, IMO. Goodwin is a strong player here too. Gunderson really skews smaller stage, along with Orrick. You'll see something like KLA Gates and Perkins Coie in the mix occasionally but not often.

I think if you want to represent tech companies, in any capacity, your best bet is a job at WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick/Goodwin/Gunderson.

There is not much regulatory work in SV.

^^^TCR. I'm ex-Latham, WSGR and now in-house at a late-stage tech company that gets courted by all these firms (we use legacy counsel from a diff geography but are shopping for our IPO counsel).

[Anonymous User]

I was in SV til mid 2018, so take this with a grain of salt. (I asked friends currently in SV and they said this is still true, but a necessary caveat.)

There's sort of a battle on who advises a company when it's time to get invested in by a VC. If you're young, you're probably going to rely on a shop that does a lot of "GC for startups" work -- Fenwick, Cooley, somewhat Orrick. This means that you won't just be doing VC advisory for your clients. If you're at a Series C or so / "real" money is coming in, Fenwick/Cooley/etc try their best to keep the relationship and WSGR/MoFo/bigger SF transactional shops try to get the client, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

The politics of company-side VC is complicated, both because of who should be adverse to who (i.e. You can rep Google's venture arm, which may be competing with Google's M&A arm, etc) and because VC' is a relationship business and any clients who are not all-stars will be sensitive to demanding too much and putting off those shops, especially for their next venture. This is very different if you represent a top, top startup -- where, these days, VC's are competing to give more money with less control. (Some founders see VC's as their friends, others as their enemies -- again, the politics are ... messy.)

It's instructive to think of it as two sets of shops: those that service established companies (Oracle, Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce) and those that service younger startups. There are a few groups out there that do one thing broadly (STB SV is a very finance oriented practice, there are a few patent boutiqes, a handful of places that do bet-the-young-company employee litigation, etc).

There is a common misconception here. WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick are more or less peers. WSGR and MoFo are not peers. Who those three or so firms lose clients to is a real mixed bag and it tends to be 5-10 year post-IPO. Sometimes DPW or Latham may swoop a few at IPO but that's more of an anomaly recently, IMO. Goodwin is a strong player here too. Gunderson really skews smaller stage, along with Orrick. You'll see something like KLA Gates and Perkins Coie in the mix occasionally but not often.

I think if you want to represent tech companies, in any capacity, your best bet is a job at WSGR/Cooley/Fenwick/Goodwin/Gunderson.

There is not much regulatory work in SV. Most do outsource to DC offices, or in the case of a few who shall remain nameless, to other firms entirely. The business model is incorporation > funding > commercial contracts > IP strategies > employee benefits > litigation. That's the core. Obviously there's a lot of data privacy and security, sanctions and export controls, and tax advice along the way but that can be handled by relatively small teams.

Also, for example, Google still uses WSGR for a ton of stuff (so does Twitter) and Facebook still uses Fenwick for a ton of stuff. Salesforce moved to Gibson Dunn, I think, for a lot of their corporate work and Oracle uses Weil for a lot of their M&A but they all use dozens of firms. Cisco uses Fenwick for M&A, I believe. So it's not really quite so MoFo versus Fenwick, as a cursory analysis can lead it to appear.

Can you speak more about Goodwin? What makes it a strong player compared to the SV native firms?

[Anonymous User]

Can someone compare the startup game between Fenwick/WSGR/Cooley and Orrick? Is Orrick representing and pitching the same clients, and have the same exit ops, as the other two? Or is it a large difference?

[Attorney1379]

Old topic but worth a revival given how much EV/VC work has taken off in the last couple of years.

Orrick has a very strong emerging companies practice (eg, tons of YC clients work with Orrick). It’s M&A capabilities are strong but a step behind Cooley. In Europe, Orrick is the leading emerging companies firm and has been for quite some time.

Check out pitchbooks interactive leave tables - cooley and gunderson are far and away most active in this space. But clustered as the next band is wsgr/Fenwick/Orrick/Goodwin. Pitchbook is of course one source but the top 5–7 or so firms in this space in pitchbook are consistent with chambers and legal 500.