Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian

When the innovation economy launched in Silicon Valley, Gunderson Dettmer saw an opportunity and set out to create a firm as innovative as the ideas around it. The firm didn’t just watch the industry accelerate, expand, and evolve – it was at the center of it.

Gunderson Dettmer constantly scales its honed capabilities, preeminent skills, and deep bench of talent to meet the demands of the innovation economy and to support the growth of our cutting-edge clients.

Gunderson Dettmer believes in the spark of an idea, the investment in innovation, and supporting those that aim to change the world. The firm represents the forward-thinkers and the dealmakers, the accelerators and the achievers; those who challenge, change, and improve.

Gunderson Dettmer represents what's next.

Emerging & Maturing Companies
Gunderson’s corporate lawyers focus exclusively on the emerging technology market, making them uniquely qualified to help management, Boards and investors achieve their goals — whether raising capital, achieving a successful M&A or IPO transaction or thriving as a public company. The firm’s lawyers represent technology and life science companies of all sizes in the US, India, China, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and other markets globally.

Licensing, Strategic Partnering & Commercial Transactions
The firm’s technology team routinely works on hundreds of significant strategic transactions in the technology and life sciences sectors every year, including many significant strategic partnering deals. The team has done every type of deal that emerging, maturing and public companies undertake as they develop, acquire and monetize technologies and create new business models to bring products to market.

Venture Capital & Growth Equity
Gunderson is the world’s leading law firm for venture capital and growth equity funds. The firm’s fund lawyers provide practical guidance on a full range of operational, formation, investment and liquidity issues for more than 500 fund firms and negotiate close to 1/3 of every venture capital dollar raised worldwide — more than any other firm in the world. The firm’s market leadership ensures the most timely guidance on emerging trends and unrivaled business and strategic advice.

Executive Compensation
Gunderson lawyers are steeped in the tax, corporate and securities, labor and employment and related technical complexities that govern compensation arrangements. The firm’s team designs compensation plans that are essential to emerging growth and maturing companies’ ability to attract and retain top talent.

Labor & Employment
Gunderson’s employment lawyers know the issues that technology and life sciences companies confront daily and leverage their keen understanding of industry contexts to provide unique insight and solutions.

Tax
From formation to financing to exit, the firm’s tax lawyers advise founders, executives and investors on tax matters at each stage of the business growth cycle. Gunderson’s tax team provides guidance on structuring transactions and ongoing counsel for tax planning and compliance issues. The firm recognizes that tax advantages and business purposes often conflict, and the tax team is adept at figuring out how to achieve the right balance to serve its clients.

International Work
With over 2,500 transactions completed outside of the US since 2018, Gunderson Dettmer lawyers are intimately familiar with the tax, structuring, regulatory and comparative law aspects of cross-border and international investing and representation.

China
Gunderson maintains the pre-eminent China-focused venture capital fund practice, combining extensive Silicon Valley experience with a deep knowledge of the local China market. The firm has extensive expertise in both fund and company representation and structuring cross-border financings at all stages. Since launching the Beijing office at the end of 2012, the firm rapidly achieved prominence in China and across Asia among top venture-backed companies and venture and growth equity funds for its work with respect to equity financings, joint ventures, cross-border M&A and other strategic transactions. The practice also earned acclaim from various publications, including ALM’s Asian Law Awards, China Business Law Journal and PitchBook.

India & Southeast Asia
With the 2016 opening of Gunderson’s Singapore office, the firm solidified its presence in the region. Gunderson represents some of the highest funded Indian and Southeast Asian technology companies as well as a number of leading investors active in the region. The firm also handled the most highly-valued private sell-side M&A deal in history — Flipkart’s $16 billion acquisition by Walmart in 2018. The practice has earned recognition from Chambers Asia-Pacific, India Business Law Journal and the Asian Legal Business SE Asia Law Awards

Latin America
Gunderson represents a dominant share of the leading tech companies in Latin America, including many of the highest valued companies, and has negotiated most of the largest venture capital and technology M&A transactions in the region. The firm also acts as fund formation counsel for nearly every significant venture capital fund in the region. Its attorneys also have relationships with key government bodies supporting market development such as: INADEM in Mexico, CORFO in Chile, Innpulsa in Colombia, Ministerio de Produccion of the Argentine Republic, as well as a wide array of local law firms, angel investors, accelerators, advisors and other market participants.