Summer ‘21: Employment Law
Building a
Business
and a Community During a Pandemic by BRIAN LALIBERTE AND JULIE SALTMAN
Why would anyone start a business during a pandemic? Having started three businesses ourselves, and having helped launch a handful more, there really hasn’t been a better time. We’ve found that people are more willing than ever to think big about hard problems, create solutions through meaningful collaboration, and build cross-functional teams that leverage deep expertise from around the world. Maybe we, and the founders we represent, are crazy. Or, maybe not. The evidence will come in well
after this pandemic is behind us. Our firm belief is that we and our founders will have created and delivered more value because we chose to press forward despite the chaos, closures and isolation. Founders often struggle with a complex set of decisions as they organize, build and grow their companies. Our task is to facilitate a decisionmaking process informed by facts and data, guided by thoughtful analysis, tailored to the founder’s needs, and translated into a system of repeatable, scalable and sustainable activities. We work collaboratively with founders and create connections across teams to expand our founders’ networks. The pandemic made it far more complicated, but our model has held up.
When we help founders organize their new business, we don’t approach the matter as lawyers first. We approach it as entrepreneurs. 42 | Columbus Bar L aw yers Quarterly Summer 2021
