The future of virtual deal-making and the return to work

Palo Alto CA

19 May, 2021

5:51 AM

Description

Louis Lehot is a partner and business lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. Over the last year, the pandemic upended many industries, prompting businesses to pivot quickly to enable a fully virtual everything, from workplace to marketplace to nearly every aspect of life. Even the legal profession, which historically has been slow to adopt technology, is now starting to catch up to other industries by embracing digital transformation. The results in the startup world have been similar to those seemingly everywhere else. In-person meetings have been scrapped in favor of virtual meetings. Travel has been replaced by videoconferencing. Paper has been replaced by bits and bytes. While the tech industry is starting to return to normal, how much the new normal will be like the old is still an open question. At the same time, increased reliance on technology is changing the trajectory of virtual deal-making. The rapid virtualization of many business functions has had a number of unintended consequences. On the one hand, for startups and investors, virtual deal-making has become commonplace, which has changed the dynamics of raising capital and investing. One startup CEO noticed that compared to pitching in person, virtual deal-making had a heightened focus but found that “it allowed for more robust conversations and data sharing over a shorter period of time.” This pattern has been common since COVID-19 pushed so many meetings into cyberspace, but it also particularly complements high-resolution fundraising, allowing startups to connect quickly with more investors than ever before. Read More here.