Legal systems for companies that move faster than their paperwork.
Founders rarely lose to the law — they lose to documents they signed in a hurry. The practice builds the legal layer of a startup the way you build its codebase: versioned, owned and ready to scale.
Incorporation to exit.
Formation & founder agreements
Entity choice and incorporation, founders' agreements with vesting, IP assignment from day one, and the equity story documented before it gets complicated.
Fundraising documentation
Term sheets, SAFE-style and convertible instruments, share subscription and shareholders' agreements — negotiated with an eye on the next round, not just this one.
ESOPs
Plan design and documentation, grants, vesting and exercise mechanics, and the communication employees actually understand.
Commercial & technology contracts
Customer terms, SaaS agreements, data-processing terms, vendor and partnership contracts — templates built once, reused safely.
Privacy & AI readiness
DPDP-aligned consent and notice flows, AI-feature reviews and the labelling obligations for synthetic content — handled inside the same engagement as the product contracts.
Exit & secondary support
Diligence preparation, disclosure schedules and the transaction itself — alongside the Corporate & M&A practice.
Fixed scope, founder pace.
Startup legal work is priced and scoped like sprints: a defined deliverable, a date, a fee agreed in writing. You always know what is being built and what it costs — and the documents come back in plain language, with the negotiation points flagged for a five-minute decision.
As the company grows, the same practice carries the work into funding rounds, disputes and data programmes — context never has to be rebuilt.
Priced and scoped to the stage you are actually at.
Before the first customer
Entity, founder terms, IP assignment and the first contract templates — the kit every startup needs before its first customer.
Raising a round
Round documentation, ESOPs and the diligence hygiene that makes the next raise faster than the last.
After the raise
Ongoing counsel as the team, product and regulatory surface grow — scaled to what the stage actually needs.
Saya & Associates