Our Managing Partner Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu spoke at the training program of N Kolay – Biruni Teknopark On Kuluçka, a pre-incubation program run by Biruni Teknopark in partnership with N Kolay for early-stage founders preparing to incorporate and step into their first formal fundraising conversations.
The central thesis of the talk was clear: a pre-incubation program is the highest-leverage moment in a startup’s legal life — the founder is still pre-revenue, the cap table is empty, the IP is unencumbered, and every structural decision made in this window is essentially free, while the same decisions made eighteen months later cost real time, money and trust.
The legal checklist for pre-incubation
Mümtaz walked the participants through the legal milestones a pre-incubation cohort should clear before pitching to the first institutional investor: founder agreements, IP assignment, vesting and reverse-vesting, share structure, employment-versus-contractor classification, and an early decision on whether to flip to a U.S. parent or stay Turkey-domiciled.
From program to pitch
Closing the session, Mümtaz reminded the participants that the investor’s first read of a deck is also a structural read: a clean cap table slide and a clean entity diagram aren’t decorative — they’re a signal that the founder takes the structural side of the company seriously, which is one of the cheapest forms of credibility a founder can build.
