Insights

Laura Fleet, Esq. | Healthcare Attorney | Founder | Fractional General Counsel | May 13, 2026 Most founders make their first key hire under pressure. Someone great is available. The window is short. You pull an agreement template, send it over, and move on. The clause that will matter most never gets read. That’s not negligence. That’s how early stage companies operate. But it’s also how liability gets built into the foundation. THE CLAUSE FOUNDERS MISS It’s usually t

There's a point most founders reach where the team stops performing the way it used to. Decisions take longer. Accountability is inconsistent. People are smart, motivated, and still somehow not executing. The instinct is to look at the people. Wrong answer. I've seen this pattern dozens of times, both as a founder who lived it and now advising founders going through it. The team isn't the problem. The structure around the team is. When no one knows who owns what, everyone

I’ve worked with many early-stage companies across different industries, different founders and in different stages. I keep seeing the same legal mistakes. Not similar ones. The same ones. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern. And patterns have causes.

There’s a moment in every growing company where things stop working the way they used to. Revenue is up. The team is bigger. Opportunities are everywhere. And yet everything feels harder than it should.