Article · 12 min read

Contract and Legal Traps to Avoid (Startup Founder Sales Series, Part 11)

Mark Birch · AWS Startups Blog Free Beginner

Written by a founder-side sales veteran, this walks the exact traps in a big-company paper: net 90-120 payment terms you should push down, IP ownership of derivative work so you can still build the same feature for the next client, disguised termination-for-convenience, most-favored-customer pricing clauses, and capping indemnity and liability (which he flags as the most contentious). It is the plain-English map of what to read first before a lawyer even opens the file.

  • Indemnification and liability caps are the most contentious clauses; never leave them uncapped
  • Watch for termination-for-convenience hiding inside termination-for-cause language
  • Nail down IP ownership of derivative work so you keep the right to build the same feature for other customers
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The question it answers

  1. I'm doing a paid pilot with a big company and they sent a 20-page contract. What clauses actually matter?

Read with it

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  2. A startup lawyer's clause-by-clause breakdown from the vendor side: it explains that a liability cap does not erase risk, it... Startup Lawyer Article · 25 min read The Startup Commercial Contracts Guide Ryan Roberts
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