expertise - KASSAILAW - innovation technology lawyer

Expertise

The information age we live in is disrupting everything it can, and we couldn’t be happier. First, because there is no progress without disruption. Second, as lawyers, there is nothing more challenging and mentally rewarding than finding viable solutions for our clients in areas where the law is lagging behind and can’t even closely follow the technological breakthroughs at the gate of the fourth industrial revolution. For us, that is when our eyes light up. That is why we have become innovation and technology lawyers, and that is why we couldn’t be prouder of our clients.

WHICH STAGE ARE YOU AT?

GROWTH

Turning your ideas into reality and starting a company can be pretty challenging. Whether it is some advice on validation, competitive analysis, pitching, product-market fit you need, or some legal competence on building your team, the company structure, your online presence or creating your products and services you require, our experienced team is more than happy to help you. We have helped a couple of hundred projects and companies in their formation and other initial corporate matters, fundraising, IP strategies, contracts, or identifying and handling the legal risks of their business, along with providing regulatory compliance for them, and we are always there for you, too.

ESTABLISHED

Improving your business is crucial once you have already handled the bumpy road of the initial phases of growth. With our goal of understanding your business first and then coming up with the best legal fits for you, we can easily adapt to your special needs. Supporting your corporate, contractual, compliance or investment concepts and views is our major objective. We believe that the law is not there to build obstacles, but rather to guide you on the entrepreneurial journey to make your company bloom. Stable and persistent growth requires solid processes, policies and structures, rock hard legal and business foundations and well-known responsibilities. Whether you need to build those up from scratch or to optimize the existing ones, we are glad to help out either way.

MATURE

In the mature stage, your business faces new opportunities and challenges every day. If you need continuous legal support in a virtual in-house role, just some reinforcement or staff-on-demand in the course of a complex transaction, international market entry, new investment round, business development or simply rationalisation, we are keen to share our experience and get that burden off your shoulders so that you can focus on the areas where your business needs you the most in order to grow.

BUSINESS MENTORING

Business mentoring is a great experience and a real win-win relationship for both your business and for us. You can ask all the questions that you have never dared or wanted to ask before. You can get new perspectives that you might have missed, something that is totally understandable since you have been involved with your company day and night for a while. It can open new windows, doors and a realm of new ideas. For us, it is a chance to give back to the community. We are really proud of our mentored teams making great success, either by mastering their validation, winning a prestigious pitch competition, prosperously closing an investment round or killing it at the negotiation table. You ask, we share and you grow. That is our biggest victory.

INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

Quantum computers. Flying cars. Operations executed by robots. Chips implanted into humans. Genetic editing. The sci-fi world is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality. In fact, if you visit a tech conference you can personally experience and feel that the future has become the present. We live in a world where change has hit dramatic heights at exponential speed. The so-called fourth industrial revolution, driven by technology, will dramatically change our lives in basically all areas, even if some parts might seem to be somewhat resistant at this still early stage. This revolution challenges everything, from the simplest daily activities to the core values of humankind. Working with technology requires special skills and attitude and a constant alert state by all professionals, but it is extremely rewarding to see the companies setting foot in highly competitive markets, growing, or being acquired by mature market actors while shaping our future. As technology lawyers, we couldn’t feel more alive by the constant challenges and teasers of this revolution and its daily legal and business developments.

YOUR STORY

Haven’t you found your tech area in the above? Whether you work in spacetech, healthtech, sportstech or any other industry, we would love to hear more about you. We are curious, adventurous and eager to learn about new areas, especially now that most of the above are so closely related and have so many overlapping questions and problems that we are almost certainly familiar with many of your business issues too. Solving real life’s practical problems and advising companies, having to handle them is a big responsibility which we are happy to share with you. Let us know how we can help.

VENTURE CAPITAL AND INVESTMENT

At any stage of a business venture, capital will surely be needed at some point. KassaiLaw has been chosen to be a trusted advisor in many deals from angel investors to Series A and above, and have closed a vast number of transactions. Whether you need us to evaluate a term sheet, review an investment agreement or draft a shareholders agreement, or you are preparing for conversion, KassaiLaw has significant expertise in all kinds of investor deals and financing, having worked for both sides, for investors and for companies seeking investment alike. Us participating at the negotiating table or even leading the conversation can help you run a smoother, more efficient funding process so that the funding journey does not end up being the sole purpose of your company’s existence, but instead you can focus on creating value for our customers.

PREPARATION FOR INVESTOR NEGOTIATIONS

“How big is the market opportunity? What’s your go-to market strategy? What are the weaknesses of your company? Do you know any companies that failed in your market?” These are just some examples of the 200+ questions from our investor questionnaire, questions we have heard from investors when we represented either them or the opposite side, the startups, during these negotiations. Being a considerate founder also means that as far as humanly possible you prepare for whatever comes your way. In our workshop we model investor negotiations and go through all the questions and answers so that you can save yourself from some potential future surprises when talking to investors, and likely as not we can point out areas on which you should work more before you even reach out to them.

BENCHMARK STUDY AND VALUATION

Even though most entrepreneurs consider VC money to be their preferred option to raise capital, there are many other possibilities open for funding your company, even if you don’t consider bootstrapping as one of them. It is very important to understand that—depending on multiple factors—most companies do not even fit the bill for VC money, and they could seriously derail their business life cycle if they still go for it. We guide our clients through the best fitted options for their project or company, taking into account all the individual circumstances that are often not considered when planning funding.

PITCH TRAINING

“Pitching! Not again! We know everything there is to know about pitching!” We have heard this one a lot. Basically on every single mentoring assignment there are teams that consider the topic unnecessary and boring, they tell us that they already know everything and they have the perfect pitch prepared. Yet, somehow we have not met a single pitch that could not be improved. From targeting the message to selecting your audience, there are a number of factors that need to be considered for a pitch to kick in. Moreover, to make things even trickier, those factors can change from pitch to pitch, from occasion to occasion. Selling your idea, product or company is in itself considered to be a kind of art form, and having the most efficient pitch to reach your goal is essential. With several award-winning teams in pitching in our portfolio, we can most likely improve yours too.

FUNDING JOURNEY STRATEGIES

VALIDATION

There are many ingredients in the recipe for creating a successful startup, but most certainly whatever you read and wherever you go, one of the first pieces of advice is going to be to do your homework properly regarding the validation. You have to validate both your problem and your solution to be able to define the perfect problem-solution and later on the product-market fit. If you manipulate your future customers into liking your solution or do not reveal all the aspects and layers of a problem you identified, your idea can easily lose its ground and with that the probability of it surviving and actually being turned into a prosperous business. Let us know if we can help at this initial but yet super-important stage.

TEAM BUILDING

Another core ingredient is to have the right team with complementing skills and personalities. We are sure you have heard at least a thousand times that at the idea stage in particular, investors (and also business partners, FYI) invest in the team not the idea. If the team shows it has the competence and capability to realize and execute the project, its chances of success increase. There are several methods to build a strong and well-functioning team, and several studies which show the consequences of different team dynamics. You should always consider those when you reach this phase both at the very early stage and in the growth phase.

PRE-VC DUE DILIGENCE AND INVESTOR READINESS

When seeking to raise capital, it is inevitable that your company is investor-ready. Your future investors will check every small detail of your business and will run a thorough due diligence before even seriously considering saying yes. There can be tons of hidden traps and issues that can come to light in the process, and if you cannot fix them, you can waste several valuable months on that process, and find yourself without investment at the end, also possibly endangering the entire timeline and business cycle of your company. A pre-vc due diligence report can show you the weaknesses or even red flags that you need to manage and fix before sitting down at the table with investors. That way you can eliminate the surprises both to them and to yourself, and avoid them discovering issues that could hinder them in investing in your company. There are several levels of investor readiness, and if you invest some time and resources in being prepared, in the long run it will gain you many more advantages with smoother funding journeys, fewer sleepless nights and more predictability.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Finding your unique value proposition is only possible if you take a thorough glance at your competitors. The world of tech is highly competitive, particularly so when you operate in a field with low entry barriers, you need to carefully examine and regularly update the news and developments of those companies who act in the same field and market. This might lead to several pivots for you if necessary, because you can significantly increase your chances of success if you can offer a—at least in some aspect—unique solution to your customers. The introduction as “we are like Uber/Snapchat/WeWork/Spotify, only better” is hardly sufficient in most cases. Unless you really are so much better, but then you need to know that too, so up the competitive analysis.

BRANDING AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

“How can I protect my idea?” might be the question we have heard most often in the course of our advisor activities. KassaiLaw has a long history of branding and intellectual property strategy making and registering for the relevant protection. Whether you need to understand the major copyright matters, register a trademark, secure your design or decide whether your solution is patentable, we are there to give you guidance on all matters which you need to bear in mind so that your brand becomes a strong and valuable one on the market.

DATA PROTECTION

Data has become the next oil, some say. With it becoming the most valuable resource on Earth, it requires new angles and innovative, yet seemingly conservative ways of protecting the people—yes, data protection is not at all about the data—irresponsibly sharing their personal data all over the internet and the world, making whistleblowers like Edward Snowden famous. Negligence with personal data can lead to unprecedented consequences and crimes, the surface of which we are just about to begin to scratch and comprehend. Identity thefts, customer manipulations or spying are just the tip of the iceberg and no, they do not only happen in sci-fi movies. Consequently, it is important to realize that creating a GDPR-proof data protection documentation and privacy policy cannot be avoided anymore. It is even more interesting that seemingly there is a basic misunderstanding among the companies on how GDPR compliance should be achieved, interpreted and adopted. We are happy to set doubts to rest for our clients.

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE:
GENERAL RISK ASSESSMENT, AML AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES,
REGISTRATIONS, PERMITS, LICENCES

Regulatory compliance is quite an unpopular and yet very important part in the life of all business organizations. If you do not have proper licences, permits or policies in place, you can easily face serious financial, reputational and business difficulties, and suffer from the consequences thereof. Understanding the actual requirements of the mostly framework structured tech-related directives and regulations on both EU and national level requires complex analytical, yet abstract and creative problem-solving skills. Furthermore, with the increasing complexity of the regulatory expectations, a deeper understanding of your company is essential if you are to be able to get the relevant licences and draft the policies which provide you with the highest compliance level possible. You just cannot leave this job to a template anymore if you actually wish to mitigate the risks of non-compliance.

BUSINESS MODELLING AND GO TO MARKET STRATEGIES

You can have the most groundbreaking idea—or simply just a better one, see above—but you also need to be able to make money out of it. We have often heard “we are going to generate revenue by advertising”. Investors do not like this phrase. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution on how to build a working business model or an exhaustive list of them to simply just choose from, nor is there a perfect guide for success to conquer the different markets, but we can help you to find a great solution adjusted to your project.

CAP TABLES AND CORPORATE STRUCTURES

“As a percentage, how much should I agree on with my co-founder? How should we regulate dilution? What should I do if I need my co-founders to stay for at least three years otherwise the business is materially endangered?” These are questions that arise regularly when setting up corporate structures or when restructuring is needed for any reasons. A solid and well-functioning corporate structure is the foundation of your company, the bricks to build the castle from. Even though, at this moment, everything seems shiny and bright, trust us, hard times are ahead for all of you, and a well-thought out structure and a proper shareholders’ agreement can save you some serious headaches and valuable months or even years of arguing with your co-founders or investors.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND BIG DATA

Business Intelligence provides data driven solutions to facilitate better business decision-making. It refers to technologies, operations and processes which aim to gather, analyse and integrate business information. The biggest competitive advantage expected from business intelligence and big data analysis is delivering a better understanding of the forces shaping markets and businesses, and guiding companies to form their strategies based on that knowledge. KassaiLaw advised one of the leading Business Intelligence companies in the CEE region for years, until its acquisition by a global market actor giant, and used the expertise gained in those years by continuously advising companies proving the potential in technology improved decision-making every day.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MACHINE LEARNING

Artificial intelligence as computer science involves developing computer software to manage and complete tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence by adapting to different situations. Machine learning is technically a branch of AI and is based on the idea that we can build machines to process data and learn on their own, without our constant supervision. The market for AI solutions is expected to reach US $47 billion by 2020 and is one of the hottest trends. The rise of AI has also exceptionally solidified the term ‘smart home’ controlled by using smart voice assistants, which are prime examples of AI. Advising clients who work in these fields includes facing questions such as: who owns the intellectual property created by AI? Is privacy outdated? Should a machine be given personhood (rights and liabilities) in a same or similar way to that natural and legal persons have? Or, to get very practical: what should I do when burglars have hacked my smart home system and I have been locked out of my apartment? While it’s true that it’ll take a significant time for us to see a perfect AI-powered process or device, steps are already being made by our clients to bring this to the real world, like making it possible for you to have a hologram meeting with your virtual law firm in the future.

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES, DRONES, ROBOTICS

When it comes to AI applications, you could hardly ask for a more prominent and better demonstration of technology than that which smart cars, as well as drone manufacturers, or robots are accomplishing with it. With autonomous vehicles running on the roads and autonomous drones delivering the shipments, which are connected and thus able to share the learning with each other, a significant amount of transportation and service related issues can be resolved faster and more effectively, not to mention the healthtech application of AI and robotics. However, who is liable if a drone causes an accident? What happens if the robot sends false signals to the doctor in the course of an operation? Who should be ‘chosen’ in an accident by the autonomous car, the elderly person on the sidewalk or my friend sitting next to me? Serious ethical questions have been arising along the way of technological development. There might not be globally accepted final answers yet, but being part of the road which leads there by assisting our clients is equally motivating.

E-SPORT AND GAMING

In a very short time, the world has gone from a small group of gamers getting together to play their favourite game, to professional players sitting in a stadium competing, their actions being broadcast for thousands to watch. Lonely gamers have turned from geeks to valuable commodities. The emergence of esports has also brought some interesting legal challenges. Esports and gaming is an intersection of many core legal expertise areas, such as sports, media, technology, advertising and gambling, but requires a unique perspective from a legal point of view. KassaiLaw helps players, leagues and teams understand the legalities of this new field of entertainment, from contracts to endorsements, and advises many clients, such as event organizers or streamers, on intellectual property law, licensing of game play and game content.

INTERNET OF THINGS

The Internet of Things extends internet connectivity to objects that have never been connected before. On the one hand, it can make life much easier and simpler by bringing new capabilities to many things used by us day to day, see also smart homes, on the other hand it primarily concerns sensors collecting data, which has many ethical, moral and practical risks. However, it also allows us to measure and quantify things in ways that have never been possible before, by means of such data we can optimize many processes. In the era of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), KassaiLaw is looking for legal answers to questions like: Can you really protect your personal data or is that just an illusion? Is there a way out for the user? Who is responsible if the internet goes down e.g. in medical applications? Who is the owner of the data generated and collected? Who is responsible for patching new IoT devices to be sure they are fully secured? If you work with IoT, we are sure you have already encountered these topics. There are many layers and issues to IoT and we are there for you to handle them step by step.

CLOUD COMPUTING (SAAS, PAAS, IAAS)

Cloud computing has reshaped the internet. Nowadays more and more businesses move to the cloud since it is cost efficient, flexible, mobile and facilitates collaboration to name a few advantages. KassaiLaw has extensive experience in advising cloud-based service providers from the outset, having built up on cloud-based solutions themselves, too. Creating the legal structure of these cloud and edge computing services falls into our daily practice so we can provide transparent, efficient and usable solutions for all business needs.

FINTECH, CRYPTOCURRENCY, BLOCKCHAIN

The fintech industry—bravely enough—is touching an extremely traditional area of business: the financial world. KassaiLaw has been working with fintech clients for years and has delved deep into the struggles of the laws and authorities regarding money laundering, payment service providers, blockchain technologies and data analytics, to name but a few. Understanding the core of the know your customer principle and the increasing focus on the collision between private and public interest have raised interesting practical legal challenges and questions that need to be faced and answered. Having a well documented policy structure that outlines all the compliance processes along with a general risk assessment is also essential. KassaiLaw helps its clients build a solid legal foundation in an exceedingly uncertain area displayed to high regulatory risk which still supports the business goals instead of only creating obstacles.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Nobody can escape it anymore. If you are not part of the digital transformation, your business will be out of the game very quickly. Businesses and society still have a lot to do to implement the concept of ‘going paperless‘ and to reaching ‘digital business maturity’—which has received a great kickstart in the lockdown in Q1-Q2 in 2020—but it is beyond doubt that digital transformation makes the processes simpler, more cost-efficient and much faster. KassaiLaw advises companies regarding their digital transformation roadmap, informs them about all necessary requirements and has led many companies into the digital realm by preparing their legal framework and contractual background as digital strategy, developer agreements, general terms and conditions or terms of use or integrated payment services, and it has witnessed many happy management meetings concerning increased revenue, cost-efficient operations and satisfied end-clients.

E-MOBILITY, PROPTECH AND SMART CITY SOLUTIONS

E-mobility is used to describe the principles and concepts of utilising electric powered technologies, by using energy from electrical power sources instead of fossil fuels by means of external charging capability. Proptech is working on making real estate ‘high-tech’, while smart cities are envisioning sustainable, comfortable and really livable cities. Innovation cannot leave mobility services or the real estate market and way of life untouched, however, it has raised major new issues and risks. Aside from the environmental benefits, there are many economical and technological benefits of these improvements, but the legal framework is getting increasingly complex every year. Working closely with clients offering e-mobility or smart city solutions helped KassaiLaw gain significant expertise in the challenges thereof. E-mobility, proptech and smart city technologies have complex legal questions in energy, environmental matters, engineering or data protection but there is nothing more comfortable to work in a smart office building with intelligent parking systems, integrated assistive technology or e-charging services, all run by electrical power.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION

The network effect has changed both our professional and private lives and has many wonderful, as well as many extremely risky effects. Many of these risks stem from the social medium itself, and many others from the fact that the lines between our professional and private lives are disappearing. Like all the tech-oriented areas we work in, social media has serious ethical and moral questions to resolve, such as cyberbullying, censorship or ownership matters, not to mention data protection implications. While advising our clients working in the field, KassaiLaw raises their attention to many practical issues and provides legal solutions therein by answering questions like who owns a TikTok video and how can I use it? Can I draw on youtube videos? How to share others’ posts with an economic purpose? Real life produces endless scenarios and legally interpreting them according to the frameworks we have to date is our daily routine.

CYBERSECURITY

Cybersecurity has to have utmost importance in every company’s life operating in the online field. Lack of security can result in serious breaches and vulnerabilities, the consequences of which the world is just beginning to understand. Keeping the principle in mind that attackers are always ahead of you—and it is very easy and slightly scary to do so if someone works with cybersecurity companies — KassaiLaw works closely with many cybersecurity firms, understanding the depth of their businesses and supporting them with relevant legal knowledge, while always being kept cybersecure by them, win-win. If you need security quality audit, code review, developer interviews, or any cybersecurity testing, feel free to contact us and our security experts are at your disposal too.

SHARING ECONOMY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Strongly built on the network effect and trust, the sharing economy allows people to exchange tangible and intangible assets with one another at scale. It undermined the classical structure of ownership and the traditional retail or employment structures. Knowing the big problems our economy and the planet are facing, it shows a cost-efficient alternative with new opportunities along with extra income for the providers. KassaiLaw advises many clients operating in the sharing economy fields such as carsharing, parking spot sharing, coworking, or knowledge sharing or logistics, and we know exactly the kind of challenges that are out there for you if you decide to step into this market.

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