Your startup's contracts are as important as your product. The right agreements in place early prevent the disputes that derail companies later.
New businesses tend to move fast and paper things later. But the gaps you leave in the early days — who owns the code, what happens if a founder leaves, what your customers actually agreed to — are exactly the things that come back to bite you during a financing, an acquisition, or a dispute. Here are seven agreements worth getting right from the start.
1. Founders' Agreement
Defines equity splits, vesting, roles, decision-making, and what happens if a founder leaves. The single most important element is vesting — without it, a departing co-founder can keep their entire stake. (We cover this in depth in our guide to how founder vesting works.)
2. IP Assignment Agreements
Every founder, employee, and contractor who creates work for the company should sign an agreement assigning that intellectual property to the business. Without it, the people who wrote your code or designed your product may legally own pieces of it — a problem that can surface at the worst possible time.
3. Employment and Contractor Agreements
These cover compensation, confidentiality, IP assignment, and termination. They also need to classify workers correctly — misclassifying an employee as a contractor is a costly and common mistake. See our piece on contractor vs. employee classification.
Building your startup's legal foundation? We help founders across Arizona, California, and Texas put the right agreements in place from day one.
Book a Free Consultation →4. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)
Before you share sensitive information with potential partners, vendors, or hires, an NDA defines what's confidential and how it can be used. Used well, it protects your competitive edge without slowing every conversation to a crawl.
5. Customer-Facing Terms
Your terms of service, master service agreement, or subscription agreement define the relationship with your customers: scope, payment, liability limits, warranty disclaimers, and termination rights. For software companies, data handling, uptime commitments, and IP ownership are essential. These should be reviewed regularly — the law underneath them changes.
6. Vendor and Supplier Agreements
Contracts with the vendors and partners you depend on should address service levels, pricing protections, confidentiality, and how either side can exit. They protect the relationships your operations rely on.
7. Investor Documents
SAFEs, convertible notes, and stock purchase agreements formalize the relationship with investors and define the economic and governance terms that shape your company for years. These are worth getting right the first time.
You don't need all of these on day one in perfect form — but you should know which ones apply to you and close the gaps that create the most risk. Our contracts practice helps startups do exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on your situation, but the founders' agreement (with vesting) and IP assignment agreements are foundational. Together they settle who owns the company and who owns what it creates.
Templates can be a starting point, but they're generic and often don't reflect your state's law or your specific arrangement. The gaps tend to surface during financing, acquisition, or a dispute — when they're most expensive to fix.
As early as possible. It's far cheaper to set things up correctly at formation than to untangle ownership and obligations later under the scrutiny of an investor or acquirer.