Our Managing Partner Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu joined the Boğaziçi E-Founder Summit, a flagship student-driven entrepreneurship event organized at Boğaziçi University, to deliver a session on the legal architecture early-stage founders need to put in place before they raise their first institutional round.
The central thesis of the talk was clear: Boğaziçi is one of the most prolific founder universities in Turkey — and the same founders who go on to raise from international funds tend to be the ones who treat legal architecture as a product decision, not as paperwork to delegate.
From campus to cap table
Mümtaz walked the audience through the structural decisions that follow a campus venture into its first institutional round: founder agreements, IP assignment, share structure, vesting, the choice between Turkey-only and U.S.-flipped structures, and the discipline of running a clean data room from day one.
Why the student window is unique
The session closed on a recurring point: the student-founder has a structural advantage that disappears 18 months into operating a company — no co-founders to renegotiate with, no investors to ask for consent, no IP encumbered by past assignments. Almost any structural mistake made in this window is also cheaply fixable, but only if the founder knows there’s a window to act inside.
