StartUp Lab Mentors | Marty Finestone

By Alex Kinsella

Building a startup can be a lonely journey for founders. You’re working long hours, sacrificing sleep and time with friends and family on something you believe in. It’s a story we’ve heard from founders in our program and across our networks—but it’s also something we want founders to start thinking differently about.

Long hours, little sleep, and poor nutrition are a recipe for burnout. It’s a topic that our Startup Lab mentor, Marty Finestone, knows too well.

Understanding burnout

Finestone is our legal mentor and founder of Legal Adjacency. He’s also a Lawyer in Residence with Calgary-based Goodlaywer. His career path began at Gowling WLF after graduating from the University of Ottawa with a Master’s of Law and Technology. Working at Gowling gave Finestone exposure to some of Canada’s fastest-growing startups. In his role there, he counselled founders and executives on everything from intellectual property licensing and acquisition arrangements to services procurement and financing.

But the long hours required for his role took a toll on Finestone.

"I ended up leaving the firm in 2019 after going through a couple of years of burnout, and the associated mental health issues that come with that— depression and anxiety—which have never been a part of me before until the burnout,” he says.

After finding the right help and focusing on his mental health, Finestone wanted to find a way to continue his work while keeping physically and mentally healthy.

“I came through the other side a better person, a better version of myself. I realized the new me doesn't fit that being in a law firm, grinding out billable hours. So, from there, I thought, okay, what do I want to do? Is there a way I could have conversations with people and guide them, whether it's mentorship or specific advice—that’s when I started my consultancy Legal Adjacency,” says Finestone.

Legal Adjancey focuses on the operational side of dealing with legal issues, where he helps in-house legal departments manage technology and processes.

“It’s taking design thinking and applying it to the legal system. It crystallized everything for me as a way to do law better,” he says.

Giving back through mentorship

With a growing practice built around self-care, Finestone says he knew giving back through mentorship would help not only himself but also founders.

“Lawyers aren't cheap; sometimes you just need to be pointed in the right direction. I've been involved in several incubators, but nothing tied to a university. A friend of mine mentioned Startup Lab, and after a few conversations, I know it was a perfect fit,” Finestone says.

Startup founders have much to think about, from customer discovery to product design and sales. One challenge Finestone sees across startups is that legal matters can often be an afterthought. He says the general legal industry model isn’t designed to properly support startups, mainly because legal is presented as a necessary evil rather than an investment.

“If you hear, ‘Hey, you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on legal stuff to avoid a problem.’ But if nothing ever happens, you never see the return on investment. It's taken away funds that could go to development, could go to food on the founders beyond just ramen noodles, or for anything that you see more benefits from,” he says.

What founders need to know about the law

Finestone’s legal mentorship starts with helping founders look at these topics as business issues rather than legal issues.

“I try to make sure that that's sort of the playing field for every conversation. It's about priorities, risk, and helping them understand their risk appetite. How much are you willing to take on and shake hands to make something happen,” Finestone says.

For risk-averse founders, he says the conversations can help them understand how to make informed decisions. He adds that lawyers and mentors should never make decisions for the client. What they can do is provide the proper education and guidance to help the client make a decision that’s right for them.

“That's the better approach to legal guidance than ‘Here's what the law says.’ If you want to do something in these regulated areas, here's what you need to know,” he says.

One critical area that Finestone wants founders to look at early on is founder agreements and incorporation. Startups can move fast, but he says that founders need to take time to understand and talk about who does what, how they will pay themselves, and what the split of the company ownership is in the event of a founder exit or, hopefully, an IPO or acquisition down the road.

“You need to make sure you have the conversation with everyone labelled a co-founder to ask if they are a co-founder. Or are they someone going to help with a discrete part of the business? Because too often, great friendships can end badly. Maybe you began as dorm roommates and started developing an app, and then suddenly, someone's life gets in the way, or a job opportunity comes up. How do you unravel that if you didn't document it correctly from the start,” Finestone says.

Why you should choose Startup Lab

For prospective mentors, Finestone says he loves being able to help guide founders to new ways of looking at a problem.

“I always love being the ‘Hey, have you thought about this or check this out’ gut. Ideas always come to me, and I love thinking about issues—that's ingrained from being a lawyer,” he says.

Startup Lab provides Finestone with an outlet to do this, but that’s not the only reason he recommends our program.

“I like that Startup Lab is tied to a university like Laurier. From the mentees and the ventures I've seen, they're in the very early ideation stage, which is often not what you get when you're in other incubators or accelerators. It allows me to bring in some of that design thinking to help look at the root causes of the problems they’re trying to solve.”

 

Want to get involved? Ask us how at startuplab@wlu.ca