Start-Up Resources

Getting the right documents for your start-up company can be daunting and costly. To give you a hand up, we offer a suite of documents to accelerate the process of forming a start-up and getting the company ready for investment.

The following documents are downloadable in PDF format.

Constitution – A company constitution is a document that specifies the rules governing the relationship between activities of the company and its shareholders.

Shareholders’ agreement – A shareholders’ agreement is a contract between the shareholders of a company. It regulates the relationship between the shareholders and sets out what is going to happen in certain situations. A shareholders’ agreement is not compulsory and is a confidential document between the parties to the agreement.

Convertible note agreement – A convertible note agreement is an agreement between investor(s) and a company for a particular round of convertible loan financing where the loan can be converted into equity. Convertible notes are usually used for the first investment in a company when it is difficult or too early to agree on a valuation for the company. The loan is usually converted to equity at the next investment round at a discount to the agreed valuation of the investment round.

Disclaimer

These templates have been made available for your reference purposes only. They show an example of the terms under which UniServices might set up a spin-out company from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. You must not copy, share or use these templates for any other purpose. Every start-up deal is different – UniServices does not warrant or represent that these terms will apply in every case and recommends that independent legal advice is sought to ensure their appropriateness for the specific use case.

Acknowledgement

The constitution, shareholders’ agreement and convertible note agreement are based on original documents provided by and reproduced with kind permission of Kindrik Partners (formerly Simmonds Stewart). Their website offers free legal resources to help you grow your tech company.