Entrepreneurial Lawyering: A conversation with “Ask a Silicon Valley Lawyer” Louis Lehot, Partner at Foley & Lardner LLP
Louis Lehot is a partner and business lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, based in the firm’s Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles offices, where he is a member of the M&A and Transactions Practices, Private Equity & Venture Capital, and the Technology, Health Care, and Energy Industry Teams. Louis is passionate about helping businesses and ventures with compelling technologies reach their growth objectives, and he specializes in assisting companies cross borders, where an appreciation of different cultures and regulations is essential.
Louis Lehot’s corporate, securities, and M&A law practice focuses on advising public companies as well as emerging private companies and their venture capital and private equity investors, from company formation to liquidity. He regularly acts as company-side counsel in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures.
Clients turn to Louis for his domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, and in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities law compliance matters. He regularly represents US and non-US registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE and NASDAQ.
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. While no one can predict how it will unfold, the response to it will involve all stakeholders, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.
In this modern civil society governed by the rule of law, the relationship between entrepreneur and lawyer will be key. Recognizing this crucial interplay, we interviewed Louis Lehot to seek deeper insights into the realm of entrepreneurial lawyering.
Blue Ocean: What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?
Louis Lehot: I have worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley over the last 15 years, helping take ventures from ideation to minimum viable product, and MVPs to scale to exit. An entrepreneur’s first job is to inspire—whether to disrupt an industry, evangelize thought leaders, attract users, close customers, hire engineers, design products, or invest capital.
As a business lawyer, clients inspired me to bring entrepreneurialism to the legal practice. In Enchantment — The Art of changing hearts, minds, and actions, Guy Kawasaki, former CMO of Apple’s book advises to start with a smile, continue with laughter, and be infused with positive energy. I try to give smiles and positive energy to all the people that I meet.
Blue Ocean: You recently launched your own law firm. Tell us what sets your firm apart
Louis Lehot: We established our firm to serve a gap in the market for innovators, disruptors, entrepreneurs, and their investors with personalized and technology-driven strategic solutions.
Whether your company is just getting off the ground or a large publicly traded company, a direct, rapid, and efficient approach can help you achieve your vision.
Similar to our clients, attorneys need to automate, innovate, and systematize every task. Helping a business thrive, go public, or attract acquisition interest, is our specialty. We work seamlessly across the innovation economy.
We focus on representing high-growth, innovative companies. We help them at all stages of development. From assisting with formation to financing, seed or venture capital investors, to preparing for an exit, public financing on a major international joint venture, we take pride in enabling our clients to achieve results.
Our broad experience uniquely positions us to provide tailored advice to drive outcomes for our clients. It affords them clarity when formulating, developing, adapting, and monetizing their business models for artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, fintech, enterprise software, real estate, life sciences, clean energy technologies, and renewable energy projects.
Blue Ocean: How do you keep your team and yourself motivated?
Louis Lehot: As attorneys, we invest our time in creating winning strategies, and if our clients lose, we lose. We stay connected every Monday morning for breakfast. We make sure that we distribute work among our team members. We celebrate victories, share learning, and prepare transactions and tasks that need to be closed during the week.
We prefer connecting via phone instead of sending endless Slack messages. We communicate often and directly. We are one team with one mission: our client’s success. We end the week with a social hour where we share our pain points, hopes, dreams and celebrate the thrill of victory, and bemoan the agonies of any defeats. We do this together.
Blue Ocean: What new trends in the startup space should we expect in the post-Covid-19 era?
Louis Lehot: We have increasingly become dependent on digital technologies since 2020, and tech innovations have converged with biological and physical inventions. Business models that leverage artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics, and 3-D printing, are rapidly changing the way we create, exchange, and distribute value. The “fourth industrial revolution,” represents a systemic change across all sectors and aspects of our lives.
Genome editing and other advances are creating a whole new industry in regenerative medicine. Our ability to edit the building blocks of life has recently been massively expanded by low-cost gene sequencing and techniques such as CRISPR.
Artificial intelligence is augmenting processes and skills in every industry. Neurotechnology is making unprecedented strides in how we can use and influence the brain as the last frontier of human biology. Automation is disrupting century-old transport and manufacturing paradigms. Blockchain and smart materials are redefining and blurring the boundary between the digital and physical worlds. Smart cities are changing the way we interact with each other.
Being forced to shelter in place has accelerated the implementation of all of these technologies.
Blue Ocean: When you have time outside the office, what passions or interests do you pursue?
Louis Lehot: In my daily life, I try to get away from work by spending some time cooking and eating with my family. Cooking allows creativity and the immediate sensory pleasure and satisfaction of comfort, nourishment, variety, and flavor.
I also enjoy reading. Books allow me to escape reality and also familiarize myself with new topics. Daily walks help me appreciate the abundance of nature which we live in. While my family and clients keep my daily life filled with tasks, I also love to travel and discover new places, new languages, new cultures, new ways of living.
I am passionate about interacting with new people, and travel allows me to discover new relationships, and celebrate difference. Spending more time on personal passions and interests allows me to enrich my relationships with new perspective.
Blue Ocean: You are clearly a leader of learning. How do you balance investing in yourself with investing in the relationships you have with other people?
Louis Lehot: I am always trying new methods to improve my mental and physical health. For me, good balance requires me to adopt and maintain good habits. You are what you eat and how much you sleep. Your ideas and thoughts are your reality. Finding new “hacks” to establish better habits can be both interesting and improve your productivity.
I try and start my day with a short, guided meditation that emphasizes gratitude, forgiveness and visioning. I am a big fan of apps like Omvana from Mindvalley to provide variety. Amplifying positive thoughts, expressing thanks, counting blessings, and removing negative charges through forgiveness, helps me stay focused in the present.
Incorporating physical exercise into my daily routine has been a challenge throughout my career as a lawyer, but a necessary habit to mental as well as physical fitness. I try to get in 15-30 minutes of Peleton or walking in the morning and start the day with a green smoothie to keep a balanced diet.
Staying hydrated throughout the day is important to stay mentally and physically balanced. Staying balanced helps me remain truly present with my clients, friends and family. When I am present, I am listening better, I am able to empathize, I can strategize, and I succeed in dispensing thoughtful advice.
If there is one thing I strive to bring to every relationship, it is the sense that I am making them feel really covered. People never forget how you make them feel.
Blue Ocean: What are your sources of happiness and inspiration?
Louis Lehot: My family is my most valuable asset and my source of inspiration and joy.
As the father of two teenagers and a spouse recovering from cancer, I am trying to impart a sense of both security and comfort, even when I am sometimes feeling anxious.
It’s okay to feel scared, it’s okay to grieve about months of school, sports, and social events cancelled, and it’s okay to be concerned about what will happen next. I am trying to remind family and friends that “future tripping,” or imagining scenarios that would be uncomfortable only breeds anxiety and unhappiness.
In my professional life, I am motivated to work with more healthcare technology entrepreneurs such as the two clients I am working with who are feverishly working towards birthing new vaccine platforms for COVID19 and its progeny.
I am excited to participate in healing the wounds of the economic crisis by helping them raise funds, do smart deals, and bring new solutions to market. I have also recently started my VideoBlog #AskASilcionValleyLawyer series on YouTube.
Blue Ocean: What’s the most important advice that you can give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Louis Lehot: I often ask entrepreneurs I meet about their co-founders and teammates. The best decision entrepreneurs can make is to surround themselves with co-founders, team-mates, advisors, and investors who are really smart, really dedicated and all-in. While many investors will tell you that they invest in disruptive technologies, what they are really looking for is a winning team to execute. There is no “I” in team and never enough supporters to help your startup achieve lift-off.
No one person can be the best at every task, and the only thing that is infinite is the quantum of knowledge that you will never have.
Do you have a personal or professional story that can inspire other people into becoming the best version of themselves?
You are welcome to share your journey with our audience.
