Corporate & financings
When the work matters: SAFEs, convertible notes, priced Series A through C rounds, bridge financings, secondaries, founder vesting resets.
412 financings closed, 2021–2024 · founders in 14 U.S. states
Founded 2018 · San Francisco · Series A–C counsel
Boutique corporate counsel for founders who refuse to be average.
Sharp contracts. Brutal clarity. No billable-hour theater.
Chapter I · How we work
A smaller shop, a sharper operating model.
We left BigLaw in 2018 to build the firm we wanted to hire as operators: senior-partner attention on every matter, flat-fee engagements, and the responsiveness of an in-house team — without the leverage pyramid, the billable padding, or the partner-associate relay race.
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01
Day one, you meet the partner who does the work.
No associate intake call, no "we'll get back to you in a week." On every matter, the partner you sign with is the partner who drafts, negotiates, and closes. Your mobile number is in their phone; theirs is in yours.
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02
Flat fees, capped scope, no surprise invoices.
Every engagement opens with a written scope and a flat or capped fee. Our average capped engagement lands 38% below equivalent BigLaw hours, verified across more than 1,200 closed matters. We scope what we will and won't do — and we hold the line.
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03
Turnaround measured in hours, not business days.
Median contract-review turnaround is 19 hours. We introduced same-day redlines on standard NDAs, MSAs, and SaaS subscriptions in 2022 — the first boutique firm in the Bay Area to make that promise publicly. When a deal is hot, we move with it.
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04
What we deliberately don't do.
We are not a full-service firm. Practice is limited to corporate, commercial, employment, and venture matters. No litigation bench, no lobbying practice, no "we'll figure it out" lateral sprawl. When a matter is outside our lane, we say so and refer you to a firm that does it better than we would.
From the partners
We spent a combined twenty-three years inside Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, and Gunderson Dettmer. We loved the rigor and resented everything built around it — the leverage pyramid, the hourly meter that punished clients for asking good questions, the week-long silence between an email and a redline. In 2018 we opened Whimislaw with a different rule: the partner who takes the call is the partner who does the work, the fee is the fee, and the calendar answers to the deal, not the other way around. Seven years on, the rule hasn't bent.
Chapter II · Practice areas
Four lanes. We stay in them.
We intentionally limit our practice to corporate, commercial, employment, and venture matters. If your matter fits a lane below, we can almost certainly help. If it doesn't, we'll tell you on the first call and refer you somewhere better.
M&A
When the company is moving: buy-side and sell-side acquisitions, tender offers, recapitalizations, asset purchases, founder exits.
Recognized in the 2024 Chambers USA Spotlight Table, Pacific region
Commercial contracts
When revenue depends on paper: MSAs, SaaS subscriptions, enterprise vendor agreements, data processing addenda, channel and reseller programs.
19-hour median turnaround · same-day redlines on standard form contracts
Employment
When people questions get serious: executive hires and separations, equity grants, restrictive covenants, workforce reductions, contractor classifications.
280+ venture-backed companies · including 11 unicorns at time of engagement
Chapter III · The receipts
The receipts, 2018–2024.
$4.1B
Aggregate client financing rounds closed since founding.
412
SAFEs, convertible notes, and priced equity rounds closed across 2021–2024.
19hrs
Median contract-review turnaround, against a BigLaw standard of 4–6 business days.
4.97/5
Average rating across 340+ verified client reviews on WhimiReviews.
280+
Venture-backed companies served, including 11 unicorns at engagement.
1,800+
CFOs and cap-table admins running cap tables on our WhimiStack tool.
Zero bar complaints. Zero malpractice claims. Ranked #4 Boutique Law Firm in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times (2023).
Chapter IV · What founders actually say
Three unvarnished notes from the room.
They closed our Series B in eleven days. The previous firm had it on draft for six weeks. Same lead partner on every call, no handoffs, no theater. We renewed the flat-fee engagement the day the round funded.
Their redlines survived contact with opposing counsel on a competitive process. We sold the company, and the SPA they drafted held. I have used Whimislaw on every financing and every vendor renegotiation since.
We had a Fortune 100 vendor holding up a renewal because we were too small. Whimislaw rebuilt the MSA, walked it back in, and saved us roughly $410K on a three-year deal. The partner did the drafting herself.