ARTICLE
18 May 2025

When ECVC Structure Breaks The Deal

AP
Anderson P.C.

Contributor

Anderson P.C. is a boutique law firm that specializes in defending clients in high-stakes investigations and enforcement actions brought by the SEC, FINRA, the DOJ and other government agencies or regulators. We handle the full spectrum of securities enforcement and regulatory counseling, addressing complex issues involving public companies, senior executives, broker-dealers, financial services professionals, hedge funds, private equity funds, investment advisers, and digital assets.
In ECVC, the deals that stall aren't always the ones with weak market fit. More often, they're the ones where structure didn't keep up with vision.
United States Finance and Banking

Bridging the Gap Between Product Vision and Investor Risk

In ECVC, the deals that stall aren't always the ones with weak market fit. More often, they're the ones where structure didn't keep up with vision.

Have you seen this before? Founders racing to ship product. Investors focused on risk and returns. Legal pulled in late to paper a structure no one aligned on.

That disconnect isn't personal. It's functional. It shows up when product, capital, and legal decisions aren't working together.

We recently worked on a deal that looked solid. Great team, traction, smart use case. But the token was doing too much—compensation, governance, access. Each stakeholder saw something different. It didn't kill the deal, but it slowed it down. Conversations shifted from growth to control.

Just because something looks market doesn't mean it's aligned. Just because it works in the deck doesn't mean it survives diligence. And clean documents don't mean the structure actually supports the business.

What Misalignment Looks Like

SAFEs and SAFTs stacked without modeling total dilution. Tokens doing multiple jobs with no governance logic. Foundations and Labs formed without clarity on who controls what. Cap tables that leave out fully diluted token economics.

Clarity Over Complexity

We help ECVC teams structure for execution—cap tables that hold up in real conversations, token plans that align incentives with governance, and dual asset models that still work under pressure. Structure isn't overhead. It's signal. It shows the team understands value, has thought through control, and is ready for diligence and scale.

One Last Thought

The strongest ECVC advisors aren't just legal or commercial. They're translators—between founder intent, investor terms, and regulatory limits.

That's where we sit: at the intersection of intent, execution, and capital.

If your structure doesn't yet match your story, let's talk. It's a lot easier to align early than fix it midstream.

And if you've seen structure save—or stall—a deal, we'd love to hear about it.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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