03 - The Cost of DIY

Don't take the scenic route.

You might be tempted to do it yourself. Bootstrapping is a legitimate method to build your startup. But you don't have to. Azure Legal offers the judgement alongside the service so you understand what you're getting.

A rejected filing costs a week or more redoing work you'd already finished, and the EIN application often gets forgotten until a bank or payroll provider asks for it. Hand the paperwork to counsel who's filed it before.

Week 0 Week 3 Week 6 Azure Legal Consult Entity + EIN Applications Filed Applications Accepted Founder-led File Rejected Rejected Accepted File for EIN, separately ~3 weeks and two rejections apart

Four SAFEs at four different caps and discounts don't dilute additively, because they all convert off the same priced-round share price, and the lowest cap drags the others' conversion down with it. Most founders don't find out how diluted they actually are until that math gets run, and by then it's locked in.

0% 25% 50% What you modeled 22% What actually converts $5M cap $8M, 20% $10M cap $12M cap 39% +17 points nobody modeled

A privacy policy copied from another company's site is still their copyrighted text, and it describes practices you don't actually follow. Both problems surface the moment anyone reads it against what your product actually does.

2 of 4 core practices don't match what's promised Copied Policy © What You Actually Do COOKIES & TRACKING Essential only, no consent banner COOKIES & TRACKING Analytics + ad pixels, no banner DATA RETENTION Deleted after 12 months DATA RETENTION Deleted after 12 months THIRD-PARTY SHARING Not shared with third parties THIRD-PARTY SHARING Shared with ad & analytics vendors CHILDREN'S DATA Not directed to children under 13 CHILDREN'S DATA Not directed to children under 13 Someone else's copyrighted text What the product actually collects & does

Filing a mark before knowing where it sits on the distinctiveness spectrum, or under the wrong class of goods and services, produces a registration that looks real but doesn't hold up.

Distinctiveness spectrum Generic Descriptive Suggestive Arbitrary Fanciful Most DIY filings land here Protection actually holds here Weaker protection → Stronger protection Classification, filed wrong too Filed: Class 9 (Software) Needed: Class 42 + Class 35 (SaaS & business services) Wrong classification leaves whole product lines unprotected

A GenAI-drafted contract sounds just as confident whether the terms favor you or not, and it defaults to including every clause it can find. A seasoned lawyer's actual value is knowing which clauses to leave out entirely.

GenAI Draft After Legal Judgment Indemnification (uncapped) IP Assignment (pre-existing work) Confidentiality Governing Law & Venue Auto-Renewal (60-day silent) Termination for Convenience Indemnification (uncapped) Capped instead: unlimited exposure isn't market IP Assignment (pre-existing work) Narrowed to new work product only Confidentiality Governing Law & Venue Auto-Renewal (60-day silent) Removed: traps client in unwanted renewal Termination for Convenience The clauses left out are worth as much as the ones written in