Overview
Hear from founders, a VC and a lawyer with tips on the key documents for a pre-Series A start-up.
Agreements are the repository of lessons learned by business people past. Join us as we take some history lessons from Singapore’s Venture Capital Investment Model Agreements (VIMA) Pre-Series A suite. In this session, we walk through VIMA’s Founders' Agreement, the Singapore version of a SAFE convertible note (CARE), a simple Intellectual Property Assignment Deed and a simple ESOP agreement. Hear from our panel of speakers, with experience ranging from founding and accelerating start-up’s, providing venture capital across early and later stages and advising on capital raising transactions. Come with questions and scenarios and put the collective wisdom to the test. More about VIMA VIMA is a suite of model contracts available, without charge, to help start-ups in their earlier rounds of fundraising. Launched by the Singapore Academy of Law and the Singapore Venture & Private Capital Association, the documents support the Singapore Government’s endeavours to boost Singapore’s appeal as a regional hub for start-up’s and venture capital investments. VIMA agreements aim to set out solutions to address common problems faced by entrepreneurs in similar situations.
Schedule
Date: 14 Nov 2023, Tuesday
Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM (GMT +8:00) Kuala Lumpur, Singapore
Location: 32 Carpenter Street, 059911
Speakers
Speaker's Profile:
Hugh Mason, Chief Executive Officer, JFDI.Asia
Hugh is an entrepreneur with 30 years success leading ventures and building innovation communities around startups and corporations. He is currently CEO at JFDI.Asia and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at NUS Enterprise. Since 2012 Hugh has co-founded, mentored or invested in more than 70 startup companies. Hugh's Physics degree was sponsored by GEC-Marconi Research, where he worked on digital radar, radio propagation and home automation. This gave him the opportunity to train as a TV producer-director with the BBC's Tomorrow's World. Hugh left the BBC to found Narrateo, an independent TV production company. In 2001, Hugh co-founded Pembridge Partners a London-based investment and advisory firm. In 2009, Hugh co-founded JFDI.Asia. JFDI has also supported thousands of start-up founders through its outreach programs. Outside work, Hugh co-founded UAS - a UK education charity. Born a UK citizen, Hugh is now a Permanent Resident of Singapore.
Speaker's Profile:
Yanling Toh, Regional Partnerships and Strategy Manager, Applied Materials, Inc.
Yanling Toh is a Regional Partnerships and Strategy Manager at Applied Materials. In this role, she scouts for, accelerates, and builds Applied Materials’ deep tech programs from the CTO office into the Singapore ecosystem. Through fostering partnerships in a vibrant innovation network of researchers, government organizations, venture investors and entrepreneurs, she finds purpose in developing strategic collaboration among multiple stakeholders. Yanling’s career has been rooted deeply in technology commercialization and in part, the associated legal documentation around innovation and partnerships. Her roles include program management in the public sector (A*STAR), to leading startups (from Singapore-Stanford Biodesign and as CEO to a deep tech startup NephTech), and corporate venture building, new business development and investments (Esco Aster and Applied Materials). She is trained in Mechanical Engineering and Commercial Law and Tech Transfer.
Speaker's Profile:
Vanessa Teo, Senior Associate, Legal, Openspace Ventures
Vanessa is a senior legal associate at Openspace Ventures managing legal matters for Openspace and advising Openspace’s portfolio companies. She has worked in Singapore and international law firms, specialising in corporate matters with a focus on venture capital and private equity, cross-border mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. Vanessa holds a LLB in Law from the National University of Singapore.
Moderator's Profile:
Faith Sing, Managing Director, FSLAW LLC
Faith is an experienced corporate and commercial lawyer with over 20 years’ experience helping clients successfully structure and negotiate corporate and commercial deals valued in aggregate at over US$30 billion. She is ranked as a leading corporate and commercial lawyer in Singapore and has a particular focus on venture capital transactions. Faith is Managing Director of FSLAW, a firm she founded and built it into a firm ranked among the top Singapore law firms for corporate work. FSLAW is one of the law firms on the VIMA 2.0 working group which helped to draft and settle Singapore’s model documents for venture capital transactions. Prior to founding FSLAW, Faith worked in top corporate law firms in Sydney and London as well as in-house as the first General Counsel of Aspen Pharmacare Australia.
