On October 18, 2018, our Managing Partner Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu delivered a startup law training session at İKÜvent, the entrepreneurship event of İstanbul Kültür University. The talk was directed at students and young founders preparing to build their first ventures.
The central thesis of the training was clear: a student-stage founder doesn’t need to know how to draft a SAFE — but they need to know what a SAFE is, why it matters, and which structural decisions made at the founding moment will haunt them three rounds later.
Why university audiences matter
Mümtaz emphasized that university programs sit at a unique moment in the ecosystem’s pipeline: the audience hasn’t yet made the structural mistakes that early-stage practitioners spend half their time unwinding. Bringing concrete, ground-level practice into the classroom is one of the cheapest interventions an ecosystem can run.
What was covered
The session walked through the legal scaffolding of a startup: idea-stage IP, founder agreements, the choice of entity, early share allocation, vesting, the mechanics of fundraising instruments, and the legal-operational rhythm of a fast-moving company.
Closing message
Closing the training, Mümtaz reminded the audience that structural literacy compounds: even if a student doesn’t go on to found a startup, working in or with one in the next five years is increasingly the default — and the legal vocabulary is the same on both sides of that table.
