Robert H Lee

Robert H Lee  – FB & IG @goldspruce, Email

For the past decade, I have served as external COO, General Counsel & Advisor to Serial Entrepreneurs & Tech Companies (Pre-IPO). I am an equity holder in companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars VC in the past few years, including the Long-Term Stock Exchange, Swing Education, 280CapMarkets, and Freewill. My partners and clients have produced over $10B in exits throughout their careers.

Previously, I had operational roles at two non-VC funded companies with small, successful exits, one in enterprise (acquired by CPA Global) and one in consumer (acquired by Travelzoo).

Work with me for free! This is how:

Many people are generally familiar with the initial legal tasks for a startup: e.g., incorporation, founder’s stock, employee agreements and stock options, seed funding agreements. While I am conversant in all of these (see my primers below), I don’t do any substantive work involving stock issuance. This is for two reasons: (1) anything involving securities is surprisingly complex, even for an early-stage startup, and I don’t have the paralegal support for it. This is largely because securities regulations are very complex, created in response to the securities fraud hat helped create the Great Depression. Thus the government makes you jump through a lot of hoops, even at the earliest stages. (2) At the same time, for several intersecting reasons, startup legal services are subject to a “race to the bottom” that José Ancer articulates in his blog. I find it better to ameliorate this race by the following.

I am still eager to help entrepreneurs at this stage, and because of (1) and (2), I realize that the right way to do this is to help startups select the right early-stage corporate counsel, and to be available for supplemental advice and second opinions. I do this without charging fees– sometimes, companies eventually give me some advisor stock, but more importantly, it serves as an extended two-way interview. And after developing a rapport, a company may then use me as counsel of first resort for other legal tasks that benefit from my operational experience, as well as seeking help in raising seed funding and Series A (not the legal paper work, but the actual raise).

There is an informal application process for this– I accept only about 4-6 companies in any year. Send me an accelerator/incubator application packet (e.g., your YC application) or your fundraising deck. We will do a 30 minute Zoom interview to arrive at a decision.

My LinkedIn and advisor profile

I also do work in patents, quantified self / biohacking, freediving, surf survival, machine learning

My very basic primers on fundraising and angel investing

This testimonial from a UC Berkeley professor will help you understand how I work

Sample portfolio and my appearance in a doc about Silicon Valley

My podcast from the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference

Freediving
I include the below video because it illustrates freediving not as an extreme sport, but as a calm state of mind. Anyone can learn the calm and focus to be this relaxed 100 feet underwater without air. And imagine applying this skill in other situations, such as stress at work, optimizing performance in a sports competition, or controlling anxiety in an emergency rescue scenario.
Diver: Kirk Krack – Video: Ren Chapman

I am in all these pictures, including this one from CNN – I’m the one barely visible in the back.

“Off the coast of the Cayman Islands, photographer Logan Mock-Bunting takes a deep breath and descends into the endless blue. He has been freediving for years, swimming long distances underwater without an air tank. But this time was different. He was there to cover Performance Freediving International’s Deja Blue III, an annual competition that ended Thursday. He would witness iron-lung athletes exploit their bodies to break breath-holding records.”

The related story is here. The book One Breath by Adam Skolnick covers the events associated with the CNN article in more detail

Big-wave surfers, not surprisingly, study the art of breath control

Even video gamers on Team Red Bull are trying it

Learn a Little About – Breathhold Skills – pdf

Above – variable weight diving in Bali

Below – a paper I helped write

Technical Freediving: Are Breathhold Divers Ready To Mix It Up?

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

Le mal imaginaire est romantique et varié; le vrai mal est sombre, monotone, stérile, ennuyeux. Le bien imaginaire est ennuyeux; le vrai bien est toujours nouveau, merveilleux, enivrant.

—  Simone Weil