On 13 June 2019, Vircon Legal co-founder Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu shared knowledge and experience on start-up law (“Girişim Hukuku”) with entrepreneurs at the İSO KOZA Scale-up Mini MBA Program.
What changes legally when a startup becomes a scale-up
Scaling does not add new areas of law so much as it removes the tolerance for informality. Decisions that three founders used to take in a message thread now need governance — recorded board resolutions, a clear signature circular, and a shareholder base where shareholder rights are actually tracked rather than remembered.
Headcount is the second shift. Once hiring accelerates, employment terms, non-compete clauses and notice obligations stop being template questions, and disputes route through mandatory mediation before litigation. Data volume follows the same curve: a company with real users needs a genuine processing inventory, not a policy page. See Employment Law, Corporate Governance and the KVKK compliance guide.
Author
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View all postsMümtaz is the Managing Partner of Vircon Legal, which he founded in 2016. He advises founders, investors and operators on financing rounds, M&A, cross-border incorporations and regulated verticals such as crypto-asset infrastructure, fintech and games, bringing a former startup founder's perspective to every engagement.
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