I've heard that a number of legal firms are offering interesting alternative payment systems for their professional services.<p>I'm wondering how interested the startup community would be in offering equity instead of cash upfront for these services. Many startups are unable to afford the cost that comes with professional assistance and push off the cost until later when it's to late.<p>I'm just curious as to how people feel about this practice and how many people are willing to take this type of offer.<p>In short (tl;dr)
You buy an internal professional services department (legal, tax and acct) for 2% equity.
No don't do that. Giving revenue for professional services is a really bad idea. It's a once off service which you can largely do without for a while, or do yourself. Read the book "do more faster" from techstars - it has a section on legal and stuff.<p>Foolishly giving away equity for once off services will make investment by angels/VC's further down the track very difficult/unlikely.<p>Get those professional services when you need them, which is only after you have revenue. Use your very first revenue $ on legal. You have no need to spend anything on accounting/tax when you have no revenue.