Legal essentials: reduce your risk and be investor ready
HudsonGavinMartin partner Edwin Lim distills 25 years of tech law into a practical checklist for SaaS founders. He covers what buyers, investors, customers, and regulators look for and how to structure your platform, contracts, data, and intellectual property (IP) so you’re ready to scale and withstand due diligence.
Key themes include:
Who cares about “the legals” (and why)
Know how to protect core IP, avoid cleanup later, and stay sale/investment‑ready. Consider the perspectives of your customers, investors and regulators.Build and buy with diligence
Align your uptime promises with upstream providers. AI stance: Be clear whether your and customers’ data train models; understand code scanners/checkers data flows.Own the IP (no surprises later)
Know where you stand with employees, contractors/third parties: check employment restraints and ownership clauses before you build.Third‑party components, APIs, and open source
Read the fine print and licence everything: text, images, fonts, code libraries, plugins, mapping, audio/video.Terms and conditions that fit your model
Models may differ so include the essentials: subscription terms/renewals, fees/payment cadence, access methods, user roles, IP and data ownership, user‑generated content rules, response times, warranties, liability caps , termination and practical data return/deletion (including backups).Comply early, avoid pain later
NZ laws: Fair Trading Act, Consumer Guarantees Act (for B2C), Privacy Act, Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act, Gambling Act (where relevant), road‑user rules (in‑vehicle use). Be transparent and don’t bury fees.
Key takeaways:
Prove ownership and sign a robust development agreement.
Upgrade your T&Cs
Set your data and AI policy
Prepare for diligence with clean customer contracts, compliance and a ready data room.
Continue learning: watch the full video for everything you need to know