Rezwan Pavri

For founders, investors, operators of high‑tech companies (and those offering legal support!), my colleague Christopher Palermo offers a pragmatic take on the benefits of trade secrets. Taking into account today’s litigation realities, the costs of patent acquisition and enforcement, and real‑world business strategies, Chris explains why trade secrets can be “a powerful, flexible, and cost‑effective path forward” that every high‑tech startup should consider as part of its IP strategy. He also highlights how established companies can leverage trade secrets to protect complex processes, manufacturing know‑how, algorithms, and internal systems that are difficult to reverse engineer, helping preserve long‑term competitive advantages. If you’re looking for practical, actionable guidance, it’s well worth a read!

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MoFo advised SoftBank Group Corp. on its agreement with ABB Ltd, a global technology leader in electrification and automation, to acquire ABB’s robotics business for US $5.375 billion. MoFo’s global deal team was led by Ken Siegel, Tokyo office managing partner and head of the Tokyo M&A team, Gary Brown, the firm’s global co-chair of M&A, corporate partner Stuart Alford, and of counsel Luke Rowland. https://gag.gl/f6gndt

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A Latham team led by partners Jason Licht and Christopher Clark represented DoorDash in its upsized US$2.5 billion convertible senior notes offering. #LathamTECH https://lw.link/o3LIY5

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EnerTech Expands its Innovation Platform Through a Partnership with Restructuring Company Steinberg Advisory “We are thrilled to have Steinberg Advisory as a partner on our expanded services platform. Howard and I have known one another for over 25 years and worked together at RBC Capital Partners earlier in our careers. Howard and his team have developed a platform of core services that will be a valuable resource for both our firm and our broader network of Corporate LPs and co-investors,” said Wally Hunter, Managing Partner at EnerTech Capital.

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Recast Capital has opened applications for the fourth cohort of its Accelerate program. This program is moving the needle for women-led and nonbinary-led emerging managers in venture by providing catalytic resources like shared services across legal, fund finance, investor relations, operations, and AI/automation, along with executive coaching, curated peer pods, and hands-on mentorship from the Recast team and its broader network. If you are (or know) a woman or nonbinary emerging manager raising their Fund I or II in the U.S., I strongly encourage you to consider applying to the Recast Accelerate program. Please reach out to me with any questions about this amazing program and organization. I am proud that Gunderson Dettmer continues to sponsor and partner with Recast. Supporting Recast is core to our commitment to a more inclusive venture ecosystem and to ensuring that the next generation of fund managers has access to the infrastructure and community they need to succeed. 

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There's no bigger, faster-moving, more competitive market than code gen. Cognition took the harder, more ambitious approach. As models have improved, it's paying off hugely with awe-inspiring revenue and usage growth. More than that, Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan have built an incredible culture -- the company is a gravity-well for talent! It's what makes me and the Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) team so grateful to double-down in this round and continue supporting the Cog team.

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ReserveOne Sets Out to Build the Digital Reserve of the Future Plans to List on NASDAQ Following Business Combination with M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. in a $1 Billion Transaction

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Hope everyone had a great Halloween (one holiday that is infinitely better with kids)! In crypto news, liquidity continued shifting to programmable rails as policy alignment inched forward and markets priced real products, not just narratives. Policy and plumbing State attorneys general urged the SEC to clarify digital‑asset classifications, highlighting how ambiguity blocks product design and balance‑sheet treatment. Michael Selig was nominated to chair the CFTC; confirmed leadership would enable rulemaking and coordination with the SEC, states, and industry to align market structure and supervision. Underlying rails and infrastructure Stablecoin settlement rose past $10 billion as usage broadened beyond crypto‑native flows. Revolut enabled true 1:1 USD‑to‑stablecoin conversion across six chains, eliminating fees and tightening the fiat–crypto loop. JPMorgan will accept bitcoin and ether as collateral for institutional loans, integrating crypto collateral into bank‑grade risk workflows. Crypto.com applied for an OCC national trust bank charter, extending federally supervised rails for custody and staking. Circle opened the Arc public testnet for payments, capital markets, and tokenization with participation from 100+ institutions. IBM announced a multi‑chain custody, routing, and compliance platform for banks and governments. Visa expanded stablecoin support to additional chains, and Western Union unveiled a dollar stablecoin on Solana—incumbents converging on programmable settlement. Markets Mastercard is in late‑stage talks to acquire Zerohash for $1.5–$2.0 billion, consolidating custody, settlement, and on/off‑ramps inside a global network. Securitize agreed to a $1.25 billion SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners II and, with BNY Mellon, launched a tokenized CLO fund—credit moving from pilots to listed product as the combined entity readies to trade on Nasdaq under SECZ. Chapman and Cutler LLP clients expanded ETF access: Bitwise Asset Management launched the first Solana staking ETF with native staking, and Canary Capital introduced firsts for Litecoin and HBAR. Grayscale converted its Solana trust to an ETF, broadening secondary‑market exposure. Market structure and exchanges Binance weighed pathways to re‑enter the U.S., a swing factor for liquidity and market share. Coinbase earned a major bank upgrade on monetization vectors from Base to USDC yields, showing how integrated platforms capture flows across infrastructure, exchange, and custody. Security and key management An early miner wallet holding about $442 million in BTC became active after 14 years, moving $16.6 million—an example of key rotation and UTXO consolidation as holders migrate to safer address schemes ahead of future cryptographic shifts. On deck: Join Chapman and Cutler LLP Cryptex Finance at SmartCon New York for a discussion on cross‑border payments, tokenization, and compliance infrastructure.

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DLA Piper has welcomes Josh Seidenfeld as Chair of the firm’s Northern California Corporate and Securities practice. “Josh’s deep understanding of the life sciences and technology sectors and his roots in Silicon Valley help clients achieve their corporate finance and M&A goals,” said John Gilluly, US Vice Chair and Head of DLA Piper’s Transactional practices. “He benefits clients who drive leading innovation across industries and geographies.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/egh4Vayk #SiliconValley #LifeSciences #technology #CorporateFinance

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Want to unpack competitive bidding situations better in M&A or otherwise? Consider the following auction construction and its game theory dynamic. Someone auctions a $20 bill. Standard rules except one: the second-highest bidder also pays their bid and gets nothing. Martin Shubik at Yale designed this game in 1971 and ran it at parties. Total payments of three to five times face value were, in his words, “not uncommon.” Not exactly hiding the ball there. Walk through the logic. Bidding starts at $1. Moves to $5. Jumps to $12. You bid $19. Your opponent bids $20, breaking even if they win. But you’re sitting at $19, about to lose all of it for nothing. So you bid $21. Now they’re the sucker. They bid $22. And we’re off. Each individual bid is rational. Pay a small increment to avoid a certain loss. But the system these rational bids create is completely nuts. The bids make sense; the outcome doesn’t. Max Bazerman at Harvard Business School ran this exact exercise for decades with his MBA students. The pattern, he said, was “always the same.” Bidding starts fast until the $12 to $16 range, where most people drop out. The final two lock in. His all-time record: $204 for a $20 bill. Not once in all his years running it did he lose money. Keith Murnighan ran the same game with 70 executive MBA students in 2002. Winning bid: $54 for a $20 bill. These are people who evaluate risk for a living. What’s happening is a phase transition. Early on, you’re playing to win. Somewhere around face value, the game flips. You stop bidding because you want the prize and start bidding because walking away means eating your entire previous bid for nothing. The goal shifts from pursuing gain to avoiding loss, and loss avoidance has no natural stopping point. Game theory confirms the trap. Once two players are engaged, there is no rational stopping point in pure strategies. The logic that makes $21 rational at $19 is the same logic that made $20 rational at $18, and $19 rational at $17, all the way back to the first bid. Each increment is individually defensible. There is no Nash equilibrium. The only equilibrium is a mixed strategy where the expected payoff for both players converges to zero before the first bid is even placed. The game extracts all the surplus in expectation before it starts. I think about this all the time in competitive M&A processes. There will be one “winner.” Many “losers.” For the losers, they will be facing substantial investment in diligence, legal fees, etc. So when someone jumps a bid up by 6% at the last minute, it’s super tempting to think about the marginal cost vs. the marginal value and walk your bid up as well. Each revision is defensible in isolation, but the total check can easily drift past what the business is actually worth. You fall into the mindset of “if we were willing to pay $100M, are we not willing to pay $105M?” On repeat, that’s how you pay $4 for a one-dollar bill. Cheers!

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Check out the new episode of Scaling Stateside from US Expansion Partners, featuring Luke Pappas – London-based partner at the US-headquartered VC firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA)! Luke shares his journey from California to London and breaks down the real frameworks US VCs use to evaluate founders, scale, and timing. From seed-stage investing to expansion strategy, this conversation offers a practical, insider view on what actually matters when building a global company from Europe. 🔗 Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/enidGwFq Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is thrilled to partner with David Rose, Matt Oxley, and the US Expansion Partners team on the Scaling Stateside series.

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Hexcel Adds Independent Director in Deal With Activist Investor "Hexcel added a new independent director to its board in a move that avoids a potential proxy fight for the aerospace materials company with activist investor Vision One Fund. "As part of an agreement between the two sides, Vision One will withdraw their nominees to the board that were to be voted on at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Vision One will also support Hexcel's board nominees, and agree to certain standstill restrictions and mutual non-disparagement provisions, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. "The new director, former Kaman Chief Executive Officer Neal Keating, was appointed effective Tuesday." Keating's experience in aerospace may make him an ideal director choice. Yet from a bigger picture perspective, I wonder if this settlement is the right move for investors. More and more activist campaigns are settling rather than running the full process of a proxy fight with typically a greater number of directors nominated by the activist. Hopefully, activists are becoming like the public company boards they battle, i.e. more focused on reaching consensus than big results. #governancearbitrage #proxyfights #corporategovernance #activistinvesting #valuecreation https://lnkd.in/gazBUGFp

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Corporate associates, take note: ECVC work is hot right now. Firms are actively expanding ECVC teams to keep pace with increased startup formation, venture financings, and steady investor activity, particularly across high-growth sectors like AI, fintech, and health tech. ECVC offers early client exposure, high-volume deal experience, and the opportunity to work closely with founders. We’re seeing strong demand for junior and mid-level associates nationwide, with several top firms standing out in the space. Want to know who’s leading the pack? Reach out. This is the move for corporate associates looking to be a GC one day. eric@whistlerpartners.com or DM me. #whistlerpartners #happylawyersclub

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Worth reading (with popcorn) - no really. Thanks to Teel Lidow for sharing :-) Every emerging VC should be reading the SEC’s enforcement releases. It sounds very boring… but it’s actually a surprisingly entertaining way to learn how not to torch your career! Some good starting points: https://lnkd.in/gwuSvFy4 (disturbing because there’s no egregious misbehavior - probably wouldn’t happen under the current SEC) https://lnkd.in/gFHfgTxB (especially the part about exaggerating fundraising progress starting on p.17) https://lnkd.in/gTzA5DTX (just a classic, wild ride)

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Firm Vice Chair Alan Annex is co‑leading a Greenberg Traurig team, together with Shareholders Adam Namoury and Tricia Branker, in advising Plum Acquisition Corp. IV (Nasdaq: PLMK) on the signing of a $4.7 billion definitive business combination agreement with Controlled Thermal Resources Holdings Inc., an emerging leader in U.S. critical minerals and clean geothermal energy development.

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A new California law (FIP VCC) is forcing VCs to ask portfolio company founders about their sexual orientation, disabilities, and more – all so it can be reported to the state. We built a new system to help funds on AngelList comply without ever seeing individual founder responses. To preserve founder privacy everywhere, we've decided to make the system available to any fund for free, regardless of who they work with for fund admin. You can use it today: fipvcc.com

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📢Update to my post below, the California regulators (DFPI) have now issued the form report by which VC fund managers must submit the demographic survey data they are required to collect from their portfolio company founders. Please find the reporting form here: https://lnkd.in/gG2qxpvk. ❓The DFPI has not yet uploaded the portal by which covered entities must initially register (deadline March 1st) and submit the newly issued report (deadline April 1st), but we here at Sidley Austin LLP will be sure to keep you updated. 💡Start planning now by reviewing the relevant definitions of the legislation to determine which of your entities must register and your relevant portfolio investments in 2025 to begin preparing survey transmission communications and keep abreast of the relevant updates from DFPI with respect to interpretive guidance, timing of the upload of the submission portal and other important information - check here: https://lnkd.in/gbTiNRjj #SidleyVC #SidleyInvestmentFunds #SidleyVenture

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