[EO San Francisco] Building a Modern, Flexible Law Firm From the Ground Up With David Goldenberg

David Goldenberg is a Founding Partner at VLP Law Group, a nationwide firm specializing in corporate and technology legal services for growth-focused businesses, investors, and family offices. With extensive experience in complex transactions, David advises clients on financing, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate structuring. He has a strong background in supporting SaaS and tech companies, from strategic partnerships to multimillion-dollar licensing deals, and has led mergers valued up to $1.9 billion.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[1:41] How early experiences with Junior Achievement sparked David Goldenberg’s interest in business
[3:25] Why growing up with a serial entrepreneur father influenced David’s entrepreneurial approach
[14:54] Transitioning from law school to a big firm
[18:00] The appeal of investing in startups during the early tech boom and why diversification was key
[21:25] The founding story of VLP Law Group
[23:53] Why David and his partner chose a virtual firm model and how it benefits both clients and attorneys
[26:22] How VLP Law Group tackled the stigma around remote work before it became mainstream
[33:41] The importance of a sustainable work-life balance in law and how VLP Law Group maintains it for attorneys
[39:11] The ways AI and technology are reshaping the startup ecosystem and how law firms can adapt to these changes

In this episode…

The legal industry is sometimes considered rigid, traditional, and unyielding to change. But can a law firm be built to value flexibility, efficiency, and remote work without sacrificing quality?

According to David Goldenberg, a visionary leader in corporate and startup law, it requires a willingness to challenge norms and embrace technology. He highlights the importance of shedding costly traditional office space and adopting a remote-first model to prioritize the needs of both attorneys and clients. By focusing on a work-life balance and leveraging digital tools, David has created a sustainable and resilient firm that has thrived even during economic downturns. This strategy cuts overhead and appeals to tech-savvy startups looking for an accessible legal partner.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, John Corcoran sits down with David Goldenberg, Founding Partner at VLP Law Group, to discuss building a modern, flexible law firm in a competitive industry. They explore how a remote-first model attracts innovative clients, the value of a work-life balance for retention, and ways to grow sustainably in uncertain markets. David also shares insights into adapting to technological advancements and clients’ evolving needs.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mentions

Quotable Moments

“Junior Achievement helped kids learn about running a business effectively, from gross margin to sales and marketing basics.”
“My dad looked for unmet needs and things he could build and sell. He was a salesman at heart.”
“It felt like the middle of a nuclear bomb hit, and I slept through it. I woke up, went outside, and there’s no one there.”
“We had a lot of attorneys practicing 2-3 hours a week and others full-time. That didn’t mesh well.”
“Everything cycles. We had a historic bull cycle in tech from ’08 to ’21, just constant growth.”

Action Steps

Embrace entrepreneurial learning opportunities: Engaging with organizations similar to Junior Achievement can provide foundational knowledge in business management and leadership. Such experiences can develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, essential for effective leadership.
Adapt to change with flexibility: Being open to pivoting can lead to better alignment with personal and professional goals. Flexibility allows leaders to navigate unexpected challenges and seize new opportunities effectively.
Leverage technology for remote work: Transitioning to remote work can enhance productivity and work-life balance. Utilizing digital tools for communication and document management can streamline workflows and improve team collaboration.
Mentor and learn from others: Building a network of mentors and advisors is invaluable for leadership growth. Learning from experienced individuals provides diverse perspectives and insights that can inform better decision-making.
Recognize market cycles and innovate accordingly: Understanding that markets are cyclical allows leaders to anticipate changes and innovate to stay competitive. Keeping abreast of industry trends, like AI, helps leaders position themselves and their organizations for future growth.

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Episode Transcript

Intro 00:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran 00:13

Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here I am, the co-host of this show. And you know, we’ve had great guests on this program before. You can check out the archives to hear some of our previous episodes. And before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by EO San Francisco, which is the local Bay area chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, which is a global peer to peer network of more than 18,000 influential business owners with about 200 or so chapters across 60 or so countries. And if you’re the founder, co-founder, owner or controlling shareholder of a company that generates over seven figures a year in revenue, I want to connect with other like minded, successful entrepreneurs. EO is for you and you can learn more about who we are, what we do at EONetwork.org/SanFrancisco. And you can also come down to a test drive if you are interested in exploring membership. Alright. I want to give a shout out to our guest here today. His name is David Goldenberg, and he is the founding partner at VLP Law Group LLP. He does corporate and startup legal work, he’s a new member of EO San Francisco. We’re going to be diving into his story and his background. And David, I love to start by getting to know our guests and knowing a little bit about where they started in terms of their entrepreneurial journey. And one thing that stood out for me with you is you got involved in Junior Achievement. Something I hadn’t heard of before, or maybe I had. And it’s in the deep recesses of my brain. You said it’s kind of like Boy Scouts for entrepreneurs. Tell me about it.

David Goldenberg 01:40

It was. That’s what it felt like a little bit. It was a sort of night class. Not really a class, I guess an organization, a group, that met largely taught by, I think, parents of some of the kids in my school. And I think it’s one of these things where there’s chapters and you can start a chapter and, you know, make the class for your kids. And it helped kids learn about running a business effectively. And so there were different parents that came in and talked about everything from, you know, gross margin. Right. Like that is the you know, the product’s going to cost $10. What should we sell it for? You know, kind of a thing to sales and marketing. You know, basic like how do I sell something? How do I approach somebody? You know, how do I deal with objections? Some very basic kind of sales topics and profit. And then we did basic P&L, you know, once people started selling the actual good that we picked, you know, taking that back and showing how that turned into a profit and loss statement.

John Corcoran 02:48

So this is exactly every eight year old’s dream, is talking about sales and stuff like that.

David Goldenberg 02:53

Well, I think getting rich is every eight year old’s dream. Not every but many eight year olds dreams, right?

John Corcoran 02:58

Were your parents business owners? Entrepreneurs?

David Goldenberg 03:00

My dad was an entrepreneur. He was a serial entrepreneur.

John Corcoran 03:02

Did he bring you into this?

David Goldenberg 03:04

No it was just, I mean, he was. I would say he wasn’t unsupportive, you know, but it wasn’t like, oh, you know, David, you’ve got to go do this. Not at all. Yeah. I was, how would I say it? I was just a kid who liked to join things, you know? Yeah, that seemed interesting to me. So I was in a bunch of clubs, and that was one of them.

John Corcoran 03:21

And so your dad was a serial entrepreneur. What companies did he have?

David Goldenberg 03:25

So he was a pharmacist by training and he first opened. So he left. He worked at thrifty or one of the, you know, big chain drugstores early on and then left and bought his own pharmacy with a partner, bought out that partner, and then developed a unique business model for that business, which was he serviced a convalescent hospitals. So imagine, you know, one account would be the entire hospital. And each person in that, you know, home would have the right to select whatever pharmacy they wanted. But if you didn’t select a pharmacy, they would deliver all the medications you were taking. And you developed a bunch of systems to make it easier for the hospital to deliver those medications to the people. And then he would go out and sort of sell that system and his whole pharmacy services. So that was the, you know, the, let’s say the base, you know, from, which.

John Corcoran 04:17

Is kind of like a B2B model or going after a larger account.

David Goldenberg 04:22

Yeah. That’s correct. And he closed the front door. You know, he bought a retail pharmacy that, you know, kind of like a Walgreens, you know, with, you know, beer and, and, you know, greeting cards and all that stuff closed. All that got rid of all that stuff and had an institutional only pharmacy from early, you know, a couple of years after he bought it. So from there he developed a computer system to help manage that whole system, you know, and sold that computer system actually to third parties. As you know, he wasn’t a programmer. He hired a programmer, you know, develop the thing. He did a training, a nurse training, like educational tape, like a VHS thing that you could go get at, you know, blockbuster or whatever, pay, you know, your $39 and get some certifications. So he had that was the third business that he started. And each one of these would kind of cycle through their own life cycles, you know. So he was.

John Corcoran 05:15

Kind of kind of looked for opportunities where he could provide a service or a product to a market.

David Goldenberg 05:21

That’s right. He looked for unmet need and that’s right. And, and things where he felt, you know, he could build something and sell it. Yeah. Yeah. He was a salesman by I would say that that was his core way of thinking about the world. Right. Was like, well, what can I sell? Yeah.

John Corcoran 05:40

Yeah, yeah. And you, you end up going from, you grew up in, like me in the San Fernando Valley. We’re both valley boys. And we will hold off on conducting this entire interview in Valley Girl speak, which we could do, but we will hold off. We’ll spare totally from that. Gag me with a spoon and you go off to a rural western Massachusetts. Yes. Which I actually moved in the middle of fifth grade from Woodland Hills Elementary, where I went to elementary school, moved to kind of suburban Massachusetts. And I can still remember walking into this in the middle of the school year, like the principal taking me down the hall to my classroom, opening the door in the middle of the day and like, oh, here’s the new kid and everyone looking at me. You know, this California kid? Yeah. And I just didn’t fit in, you know, and how rough that was. Yeah, but you had a similar experience going to very similar Amherst.

David Goldenberg 06:35

That’s right. Yeah. So I went to Amherst my freshman year and I chose it, you know, as because it was a smaller school and I had gone to a prep school for high school. And so I thought like, oh, the that kind of high touch environment would be a good fit for me, and I think that part of it was a good fit. But not, you know, I just had so many other things that I wanted out of college that I didn’t really how would I say it, that I didn’t appreciate when I made my choice? And so, you know, when, when I got there and like, you know.

John Corcoran 07:11

Like, like.

David Goldenberg 07:11

Well, the weather, the weather actually wasn’t the worst thing. I mean, the weather wasn’t great by any stretch. You know, that’s saying something.

John Corcoran 07:18

If the weather wasn’t the worst thing. That’s right.

David Goldenberg 07:20

I would have not. I would have toughed it out for the weather. But you know that, like my football, my high school football team at my prep school probably could have beaten the Amherst football team. Right. You know. Right. And so like you’re going to these you know, and I didn’t realize that that was part of what I had subconsciously thought college was. You know, my mom went to UCLA. She was a Bruin. We used to go to the UCLA football games like and I had expected maybe not UCLA but something. Right. And you know so all that is like mostly absent my freshman year. And, you know, it was cliquey. And the East Coast people I found to be again, no offense, you know, just a different way of culturally.

John Corcoran 08:02

Just very different. Yeah. Very different can be very.

David Goldenberg 08:04

Much more reserved, more insular. Exactly. And so that was a shock. And that was the hardest part for me. You know, I came home at Thanksgiving and realized that the, you know, the average person in Los Angeles, even strangers on the street, were, in my eyes friendlier than my Co-freshman, you know, at Amherst. And that was kind of those were the hard decisions, you know that led to the hard decision to transfer.

John Corcoran 08:31

Yeah yeah yeah that must have been tough that year. You know making that decision to kind of basically you plan for this and you know, in retrospect, it’s not that big a period of time in our lifetimes, right? It’s like six months or a year or something. And you make your choice and you go there. But at the time, you know, when you’re 18, 19 years old, it feels like a massive I don’t know, did it feel like a failure to you or you end up going to Stanford so you land on your feet. But I mean, did it feel at the time like making that decision to leave? Did it feel like, oh, like I’m I’m I’m, you know, this is a setback.

David Goldenberg 09:04

No, it was more about, I would say like the devil, you know. Right. So, you know, regardless of whether Amherst was a great fit or not, I knew what it was. And I had made some friends. And I had a, you know, environment there, and I knew and I would, you know, that whole scariness like you talked about, you know, being thrown into your class, you know, as a fifth grader, you know, I was going to have to do that all over again, right? With a bunch of new random people and with no assurance that it would be any better. And, you know, ultimately, I decided it couldn’t be worse. And so why not? But that was, you know, so it was scary in that way. But I don’t think it was a I didn’t feel like a failure. I just felt like it was, you know, it’s very similar to when you’re in a relationship. And if you’re not sure it’s right, you know and everyone will tell you when you know. You know that I didn’t know. And so I, you know, you’re sitting in this uncertainty place and, and so that it was a hard decision that way. Yeah.

John Corcoran 09:59

So you end up transferring to Stanford. Of course. Yes. Wonderful university. What was the experience like for you there? You know, it’s funny.

David Goldenberg 10:06

So by day three I knew I’d made the right decision. I mean literally like everything that I thought was lacking at Amherst, I fell right into, you know, I, the I tell people literally, you know, this, I’m dating myself. But when I was in school, they used to put a paper pad on your door where you’re like friends down the hall could leave you a message like, yeah, you know. Yeah.

John Corcoran 10:30

pre-Internet pre-cell phones. Yeah.

David Goldenberg 10:32

Exactly, exactly. And like, on that I’m there early for transfer orientation, which was overlapped with freshman orientation. And someone down the hall, like wrote a note like, hey, we’re going to the movies tonight. Do you want to come with us? And it was like it was a small thing, but I realized, like, that’s the openness and friendliness and, you know, wanting to meet new people that I had expected, you know, and wasn’t getting at Amherst. So like, from there on, you know, it was just easy path to, you know, I had a great time. I made great friends. It was a very conducive environment for me. You know, it was a great experience and you end.

John Corcoran 11:10

Up going straight through. And I did go to law school there as well. Yeah. Now some I don’t know if you had any classmates that are now world famous, but I wouldn’t be surprised because Stanford Law School has graduated some, you know, world leaders, secretaries of state senators, things like that. Yeah. Did did you when you got to Stanford Law School, did you feel like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe the people that I’m competing with here.

David Goldenberg 11:33

Yes. Game changing. You know, I, I had not really appreciated I mean Stanford is a great school. And again all of this is 20 year old or 30 year old now probably you know. Information. So I have no idea what it’s like going through Stanford. Now. I have some idea. You know, I get the alumni magazine, but in general. But when I was there, the undergrad was good. You know, there was, you know, you could get challenged, you could take courses, you could even, like, go and talk to professors, you know, about things or whatever. But in general, you know, you’re taking these, you know, undergrad classes where you’re sort of learning broadly, you know, some stuff about things, but you know, you’re not able to go out and, you know, build a rocket if you’re studying Aero-astro or something like that. Right? Whereas in the law school and something I had not appreciated was, you know, how much law school is a trade school, you know, you’re learning a practice, you’re learning to do this thing. It’s a craft. And you learn that starting day one. And it’s really like this is the first day of the rest of your life. It was very much that approach. And while the faculty was, you know, very good at Stanford undergrad, it was unbelievable for Stanford graduate school. So, you know, for the law school I had, you know, I was in a class of 12 people with George Roberts lecturing. And, you know, George Roberts is the R in KKR. Right. And he’s talking about how to take over.

John Corcoran 12:55

KKR is a big is it private equity. Would you say private equity slash hedge fund. Yeah exactly.

David Goldenberg 13:00

I mean before that word was really a commonplace term. But you know, they bought RJ Reynolds. The movie barbarians at the gate was written about them, you know, like it was like this. When you think of the go go 80s and like, all these, you know, people buying companies and breaking them up or whatever, that was KKR. We had a guy who, through the SNL loan crisis, bought 400 banks and turned them around. You know, like it’s like not like little. My securities law professor was the ex commissioner of the SEC, you know, like it’s just that. So now that’s at the faculty level, which was amazing at the student level. I’m in my securities class sitting next to this woman who looked, you know, was a little older, so I was as young as you could be, right? You know, I was like 21 starting law school. And she was maybe 30 and so and they have this law school has again, these funny traditions. But wherever you sit on the first day, that’s where you sit the whole semester. Right. And, and I turned to her and I said, oh, so what did you do before law school? And she said, oh, I worked at the fed for nine years. Right. And we’re going to be sitting there like learning how to, you know, what a bond is and like how securities work and whatever. And you know, to say she had a head start would be like an understatement of the year. Right. So and we’re on the same curve right.

John Corcoran 14:21

Right. Yeah.

David Goldenberg 14:22

So yeah, it was a totally different environment.

John Corcoran 14:25

You go off and you graduate and you join Morrison and Foerster aka MoFo, which is a kind of a real well known, well respected Bay area firm. You do that for it looks like for six, 6 or 7 years or something like that. Yeah. And before you go off and start your own firm. But where was your head at after you had left finishing working at that firm. What was your plan after you left?

David Goldenberg 14:52

Leaving MoFo? Yeah. So I had, as you mentioned, gone straight through. Right? So I went straight from undergrad to law school, straight from law school to the big firm. The big firm is, you know, all the grind that, you know, you think it’s going to be. It’s as bad as at least it was for me as everyone you know. And I don’t mean bad in a negative way. I mean bad as hard, right. So I needed a break. I wasn’t like at crisis burnout, but I was definitely at, like, I hadn’t picked my head up in, you know, what was ten years and which were, you know, from like 18 to 30.

John Corcoran 15:26

Yeah. Formative years of your life. Very. Yeah. Very like.

David Goldenberg 15:28

So I was a very different person and, and wanted to take some time to figure things out and explore. And you know, what was my next path? And I was pretty sure, you know, grinding it straight up the ladder at the big firm was not my path. So I didn’t feel any. How would I say it? I didn’t like there was no FOMO of like, oh, I could make partner here. That was like, not at all. That wasn’t something I even wanted. So I didn’t know what I wanted. But that was, that was. So that was where my head was at. Yeah.

John Corcoran 16:00

And so you end up actually getting drawn into working at a startup media at the time. You do that for about four years now. This is an interesting time because this is post .com bubble. You leave the law firm and we’re what did your family and friends say to you when you leave a stable job at a law firm after th e.com. You know, when lawyers are getting laid off and things like that. What did they say to you about that?

David Goldenberg 16:28

So, so my, my dad was very supportive and in fact, you know, his entrepreneurial head and, you know, was supportive of that journey, you know, for me And the people in the. Some people were jealous, you know. You know, famously. Yeah, exactly. Peter Thiel, who did the same thing, you know, he left a lot earlier than me. I think he made it one year at the Big Firm. But he talks about leaving the firm, and they said, like, I can’t believe you made it out. And he just, like, shook his head. He’s like, the door’s right there. Like you can leave too.

John Corcoran 17:02

Was he a mofo also?

David Goldenberg 17:04

No, no, he was in one of the big New York firms and he went famously.

John Corcoran 17:07

Went to Stanford also.

David Goldenberg 17:09

Yes. He was there just I think the whole PayPal mafia were 1 or 2 years ahead of me. So Keith Raboy was literally in the one class that he was at Stanford Law School one year ahead of me. You know, he, you know, was anyways, so I kind of saw that whole world from, you know, right in the front row seat.

John Corcoran 17:28

Yeah. So you, you because you graduated from law school, you graduated in law from law school in 96. So it’s before the whole run up. So we’re so from 96 to 2002, you’re at Mofo. Are you serving a lot of startups during that time? Correct. Okay. IPOs and okay. So you know these companies, you’re seeing the crazy amounts of wealth that are being generated. Yes. And is that sparking some kind of latent entrepreneurial, you know, excitement inside of you, or are you feeling like I’m missing out because you’re just billing hours, right.

David Goldenberg 18:00

So it was an, I was maybe two years too junior to really hit the middle of that stride. So but I was seeing that right. So, you know, in 2000 it felt like, you know, 5050 chance you would be a millionaire, right? And the fifth years. So I was a third year in 99, 2000, which is three years of experience as a lawyer. And the fifth years were getting offers for general counsel. And, you know, your average offer for a general counsel would be like 1% equity vesting over four years. Right. And so if the company is company’s worth, you know, $100 million, you know, which is a typical number back then for an IPO valuation. You know, that’s not a bad gig, right?

John Corcoran 18:44

If you pick the right horse, if.

David Goldenberg 18:45

You pick the right horse. But that’s very much right. Right. And so I was as a third year getting offers for like director level. So which was more like 50,000 shares. You know, it’s kind of like, you know, a sort of nominal equity. And on the other hand, the law firms were raising our salaries as associates quite dramatically to try to keep us from leaving, going to these startups. And, and so, you know, I made the decision through the.com boom of, like, I’m going to keep my law salary and invest in our clients. And so I would write a $10,000 check into the, you know, the company. And I thought, like, I get to diversify. And no, I’m probably not going to hit the home run. But, you know, this is a good way to kind of get in on some of that action without overly, you know, taking too much point risk, right? Single source of your life, wealth and all that risk. And a lot of people.

John Corcoran 19:40

How did that play out for you? Did you have any home runs or?

David Goldenberg 19:43

No. No home runs. Then you know like the.

John Corcoran 19:45

Pets.com and Webvan then.

David Goldenberg 19:47

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A lot, you know, is we our firm in general like got their act together to start investing like literally in 2000. Right. So we just, you know, it’s just well.

John Corcoran 19:59

Well I mean lawyers and big firms in particular tend to be behind the curve in terms of adopting new technology and new innovations and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

David Goldenberg 20:07

So anyway, so yeah. So no, I didn’t hit any home runs there. And, and the, the offer from my, you know from my friend was really like to work with my friend on a much more flexible schedule way at something that seemed interesting. Yeah. And, and so that let me I thought like, you know, I started half time which was that, that was it was kind of I joke to people, it was like this Godfather type offer, you know? I tried to get out and I got pulled back in, you know? Yeah. And because, you know. Oh, it’s only 20 hours a week, I was like, oh, like, you know, after working 80 hour weeks, I was like, I’ll just. I could do that standing on my head, you know. Yeah. And so and I did and it was great. And my mortgage was covered. You know, it wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough to make sure, you know, I knew like, I always felt secure. And then I had a ton of free time to kind of explore that eventually, you know, that business was growing. And so I increased my hours and I ended up becoming GC there. So and then we sold that company. Okay.

John Corcoran 21:07

And then later. Yeah. And then after that you, you eventually morph into your current firm. But it took a couple of incarnations. That’s right. You had a couple of different versions of it before. So tell me about that. Were you planning on starting a firm at that point after, you know?

David Goldenberg 21:24

Yeah. So my friend from law school who was she had been the VP of business development at metabolic at the same, you know, so that honestly she recruited me so that she could stop doing the legal because she was getting, you know, as a lawyer, getting dragged.

John Corcoran 21:38

Into the business. Okay. Okay.

David Goldenberg 21:41

On the biz, dev. And she also said, you know, I need a bad cop. You know, when we’re in these negotiations, right? Like, I have to be the good guy, sales person, you know? Whatever. So. Which was great. And there was high trust because we had been to school together, you know, that. Anyway, she was a very easy client, right from that perspective. So we did a bunch of deals together. And then, you know, that company got sold to what at the time was called Macrovision. It’s now called Rovi. They’re like a DVD content management. They used to be DVDs, but, you know, essentially they did all the copy protection kind of stuff. And they certainly weren’t going to need her to be business development. So like the day literally the day we signed the term sheet to sell the company, she I think the next day she came to me and said, what are you doing next? And I was like, I’m closing my deal, right? Like, I’m going to go sell this company, right? It’s like kind of the biggest deal that I’ve been working on like that I’ll be working on for like my whole time is GC. And she’s like, why don’t we start a firm? And so that’s kind of what was the genesis of that. And so we did we started, you know, she had been poking around and saw that as opposed to just hanging out like David Goldenberg, attorney at law, if you had a couple of people and made a website and had and put a little brand around it, you could command higher rates. And so that’s what we did.

John Corcoran 23:02

And so this was 2007 time frame. Exactly. Yeah. I graduated from law school in 2007. Not the best time for the legal profession, really.

David Goldenberg 23:12

I really feel fortunate for where I came out. The same. Even the kids who came out in oh one was the same problem. You know, I had by that time had 3 or 4 years under my belt. Yeah.

John Corcoran 23:22

So it was in oh one.

David Goldenberg 23:23

Yeah. Right. And so I was very valuable as a fourth year. Yeah. And at that time, and survive that downturn. And it even worse in 0708. Yeah. But by then I was, as I mentioned, so we started our little firm as sort of top notch half price lawyers. And so as the recession hit, you know, people were looking to cut legal and we were a good answer for that.

John Corcoran 23:47

So you actually made the decision, is it with this firm to have it be no offices.

David Goldenberg 23:53

Well we started so it started as you know, the two of us then quickly turned into the three of us working from home. Right. Yes. That was a virtual firm, you know. And we met at my friend and partner Andreas, you know, kitchen table once a month. That was our partner meeting, right? Yeah. And, and so and the rest of the time we just worked at home and we, but we figured out how to, you know, do remote billing and, you know, deal with the software and, you know, where do we store documents and, you know, some of those kind of things, none of which were really created for lawyers, you know, with security or any of that. So we kind of had to figure some of that out. And, and then. Yes, what we saw was that it worked. And, you know, kind of one of the founding principles of our firm was, you know, even when I was at Mofo, if the partner wasn’t within two offices of my office, he or she was calling or emailing. Right. That even when you’re in the same space, by and large, and when I’m talking to clients, you know, 98% of my communications were on the phone or email the times that I actually had face to face meetings, you know, you have a kickoff meeting for an IPO, and then that’s the last time you’re all in one room together. Right. Right. And so a lot of these deals work that way, you know, and and so for our practice and it’s not for every practice but for the practice I ran there, we didn’t really need the office. And it was a huge cost burden. You know, you have to sign these 5 or 10 year leases and class A space. Yeah. With mandatory takes and, you know, all this stuff and and if you can’t maintain that revenue line it quickly spirals downward because no one wants to be left holding the bag. Yeah. And that lease. Right. So, you know, if you see the writing on the wall, you switch firms, right? And then that creates this death spiral. You know, at the law firm level, which is what exactly what happened to a couple of big firms around 2000.

John Corcoran 25:48

Right. They had these big leases, they lose a bunch of attorneys, and then it just goes downhill from there.

David Goldenberg 25:53

So both Brobeck and Heller both crashed that way. Yeah.

John Corcoran 25:56

Yeah. And I remember that during the Bay area. During in the Bay area during that time period. Yeah. But you know, the counterpoint to having physical office space is at that period of time it is way before the pandemic. Yeah. You know, a lot of clients kind of expected you to have an office space and expected to come down and meet you face to face. How did you deal with that? How did you communicate? You know, with them? Yeah.

David Goldenberg 26:23

So two pieces. one resume, resume resume. Right? So yes, we knew from the beginning that people would look down on a firm without offices. There was a widespread sort of, I don’t know, denigration of that kind of practice. You’re absolutely right. You know, it’s not real. You know, if it’s not, if you don’t have an office. And, you know, for me, I will tell you, my clients, by and large, were startups. And they, by and large, were intimidated by all that. Right. You’re talking about, you know, these the hoodie, you know, the Mark Zuckerberg hoodie types, right. They didn’t want to like, get dressed up and pay for parking and go downtown and meet their lawyer on the 36th floor of some big office building. Right. And so I met them. I’m in Potrero Hill. I would meet them at the coffee shop around the corner. Yeah. And again, I generally met my clients once for the pitch. And that was again, typically the last time I saw them face to face. And half my clients. I never did that. Right. So. But I knew that going in because I had practiced for so long, you know, I knew no one really wanted to see me or, you know, and if they did, you know, I’m available. It’s just. Yeah, I’m not now, like, if I’m like, at Mofo, we represented Clorox, right? If I’m Clorox, you know, buying some other company for $500 million. Yeah. You need that office on the 36th floor to have that big pow wow meeting, right. And that that practice demands, you know, that space and that kind of overhead. That wasn’t my practice, right?

John Corcoran 27:56

Right. Yeah. I mean, I feel similar to you in the sense that, I mean, I started working remotely or however you call it, virtual offices, probably around this time period after I graduated from law school, 2007, 2008 and started using, you know, these digital tools. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that these things kind of became widespread. That’s right. For you, when the pandemic hit and people finally caught up to the benefits of remote work. Yeah. How did it feel for you? Did it feel like. Oh, good. Finally. Now it’s accepted and we’re a little bit out of hiding? Or did it feel like, you know, a.

David Goldenberg 28:34

Couple of thoughts on that? Yeah, it was funny. So one, you know. So I’ve been work from home for north of ten years by then. Right. Or maybe attended. Yeah, probably north of ten years. Right. And I literally it felt a little bit like that movie where, like, the nuclear bomb goes off and you slept through it. And like, I woke up, I went outside for lunch and like, all of a sudden, there’s no one outside. Yeah. Like what happened? Like, where did everybody go? Right. So that was this weird feeling. Of course I knew, you know, we were all in quarantine and whatever, right? But, like, you know, in San Francisco, it was people were particularly conscientious. And, you know, it was very quiet, you know, here for a long time. So that was one, you know, kind of a weird thing. Yeah. Our firm did not, you know, a lot of firms. Again, it’s kind of hard to remember back, but there was this, you know, great disruption for those first three, six months, right? Yeah. You know, how are we going to do business? Is the market crashed? It was like, you know, 20% unemployment. You know, all this kind of crazy, you know, stuff going on in the markets. And we literally did not skip a beat. There was not one thing that changed about our firm. And now I would say the big difference is all my pitch calls are zooms instead of calls. Right. Like, you know, the I never go to the coffee shop anymore. Yeah. Everyone but and but I do a lot of zooms. And so I do actually see my clients a lot more even just for, you know, run of the mill calls. I’ll do zooms. Because again, the ability to connect is just so much better on the video. So I’d say that the biggest change, you know, honestly, which wasn’t even a big one, was like, I do a lot more video now, but that’s otherwise our practice didn’t change. Yes. You know, people accept our firm, but they had you know, we had already again been in business if we launched in oh eight ish, you know, so it was, you know, more than ten years we had been around at that point. So it wasn’t like, oh, this is a new thing.

John Corcoran 30:26

So yeah, I mentioned earlier that you kind of reformulated the firm a couple of different times. And I guess shortly after you started it, you decided to reformulate it with a couple of different attorneys. Yeah. And you found this guy. His name was Craig, who had been kind of a legend in the legal world in the Bay area. He had scaled up other firms. And you brought him in to help build up and scale up your firm. And you actually went from zero attorneys or a couple of attorneys, 2 or 3 attorneys to 40 attorneys within 12 months. Tell us about that, that phase of growth.

David Goldenberg 30:59

Yeah. So the guy’s name is Craig Johnson. He was an icon in Silicon Valley, serial entrepreneur himself. You know, he was the number two lawyer at Wilson Sonsini if you’ve heard of that firm.

John Corcoran 31:13

Yeah. Wilson Sonsini is one of the major iconic firms that represent a lot of the startup companies here in the Silicon Valley.

David Goldenberg 31:21

And he was literally the number two there. They offered to put his name on the door when he decided to leave in 90. This was like 96. And he and he started a firm called Venture Law Group. And he joked, he’s like, I’m not even putting my name on the door of my own firm. If you think that’s going to get me to stay. Like, you do not understand who I am, right? And at that time, you know, he was a tech geek on his own. He started the first law firm with a client server architecture. You know, that’s how slow lawyers were to adopt technology. But, you know, 93, 94, whatever it was when Vlg started was like a PC based, you know, with a server and a PC client with a instead of like a dummy terminal, which is what a lot of firms had had. And, and so he built that up to 100 attorneys, this firm venture law group and then merged it into Heller in 2000, 2001 when the sort of venture market crashed. And. And from there he went into retirement. And we reconnected with him. Looking to, you know, help us figure out how to grow a firm effectively. And he liked what we were doing. And he saw that in that, you know, 2001 to 2008 time frame, really the technology had progressed where you could be remote, right? You know, that there was the the internet speeds were faster and remote storage, you know, Dropbox and all those things had been created. So a lot of these problems had started to get solved that were, you know, big obstacles for doing it back before. And, and so he decided that would be a good project for him to kind of build a firm with solving some of the problems that he always felt like he had never really been able to solve at his old firm. The main one being work life balance. That was really his main goal was by cutting out a lot of these expenses that lawyers would have, would be able to make a comfortable living working a lot less hard.

John Corcoran 33:25

And so that’s what he got. Got him excited about working with you guys. That’s right. Yeah. That model. Yeah.

David Goldenberg 33:31

That model. Right. And he wanted to give back to the profession, to be quite honest. A firm that would allow people to practice sustainably. Yeah. You know, not get burnt out. Right. All that kind of stuff.

John Corcoran 33:41

You go from zero or a couple of attorneys to 40 attorneys within 12 months, and then all of a sudden Craig.

David Goldenberg 33:47

Dies and he dies. Yeah. That’s right. 18 months in. Yep. And so there was certainly a leadership crisis, which we sort of, you know, gap filled very quickly. And then and then, you know, kind of muddled through that first year. And then figured out some good management structures. And essentially what happened was One of my partners put it very succinctly. He said, you know, when you join a law firm, you want to be with people who are, quote, like you. And we had and Craig. Everyone liked Craig, but they may not have liked each other so much. Right. And so we had it at that time, we had a lot of attorneys who were practicing two, three, four hours a week and then other attorneys who were full time, and that didn’t mesh very well. So a lot of the people with, you know, smaller practices left and went back to a solo practice or something else. And we ended up with this sort of core group. So we shrunk back down to from that. I think we were 48 or something when he passed. We shrunk to like mid 20s, but it was, you know, 75% of the revenue. So it wasn’t, you know, like it was still a, you know, a much a more sustainable practice. And then we grew back up from there, back up to the sort of 50s that we are now and then.

John Corcoran 35:11

And you had to step in a couple of different times into leadership. Yeah. What was that like for you stepping back in, trying to, you know, trying to figure out who should stay, who should go put put new government governance structure in place.

David Goldenberg 35:23

Super interesting. And to be quite honest, you know, it was great for me. I had never made partner at the big firm where I was at. So I really did not understand how firms were run as the de facto leader and actually the de jure leader. You know, I became the CEO of that firm. I think managing partner was the term we used at the time, I don’t remember or whatever, but whatever it was, you know, like I was running that firm and I got to go. I had, you know, lunch with my old, like the guy who ran mofo, right? I was like talking to the, you know, which was a thousand attorney law firm. Right. Like, how do you deal with when partners leave, you know, which is a problem that all firms have, right. And you know, he we kind of and I knew a bunch of the people there so he could actually use real names of like real partners that left. And what were the issues and how did he try to deal with it. And you know what the and so I talked to 3 or 4 managing partners. I talked I was great council. We had an internal general council, a guy who. You know, councils of the law firms and had seen he was front row seat to. The Heller collapse. So he saw how like firms go down and what can lead to. The you know total collapse and he gave some you know very sage advice. We had so I talked to a bunch of we had crisis management you know. PR firms all kinds of things. So I learned a bunch of new skills, to be quite honest. It was a great experience. Yeah.

John Corcoran 36:39

And now today with Vlp law group, you are actually running a practice within this larger firm that you were one of the founders of. It’s kind of an interesting evolution for you because you’re running a smaller practice within it. But you were there in the beginning. So what’s that like for you?

David Goldenberg 36:59

It’s a little weird, I’ll be honest. You know, it is a little weird. You know, seeing your, you know, it’s I guess it’s a little bit akin to, you know, my son is just off to college, but like seeing him get married and start his own family, it’s kind of like that, right? Where, you know, it’s fully on its own. There’s other people who are, and running a law firm of like minded people is not rocket science. That’s the nice part. Right. So, you know, you just a lot of it is blocking and tackling. And so it’s just the people who want to put in that time to do that extra work to make sure, you know, we pick the right healthcare plan or, you know, whatever it is, there’s just a million decisions like that running a business that it you don’t have to be a genius to do now, you know, is the firm growing, you know, by 40 attorneys a year like it did when Craig was there. No it’s not you know, we haven’t found that kind of dynamic leader. You know, really what we have is more management than leadership. But that’s again a choice that the partners wanted, by the way, our firm is structured. So most people wanted exactly what I have, which is I want to run my practice and not have to worry about the firm structure. Yeah, right. And not have to worry like there’s advantages to growing, but there’s disadvantages, right? You add, you bolt on. You know, we’re 50 attorneys. If we bolted on a practice of 20 as an example, you know, I would change the firm. You know that like if that’s 30 or 40% of the firm’s revenue, those people are going to want a say in how things are run. That may be a different city that they’re based in or, you know, way they practice or whatever. And then you’ve got to adjust. And so no one wants that, right? You know. Yeah.

John Corcoran 38:36

So yeah, we’re almost out of time, but we’re recording this and near the end of 2024. And if you look at the startup world, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, all, you know AI is a hot topic right now. There’s a lot of disruption that’s happening. It’s a presidential election year and that tends to inhibit the economy, inhibit businesses. But what are your observations about the startup economy today? You know, are you excited about it? Do you see potential? What’s the market like from your seat?

David Goldenberg 39:11

It is. So, you know, I’m a firm believer in the phrase everything cycles. Right. That and we had a, you know, historic bull cycle in tech. Right. I would say honestly from zero eight, you know, Facebook IPO to 2021, it was almost a, you know, like just constant.

John Corcoran 39:35

March for years. Yeah.

David Goldenberg 39:36

Yeah. Of just, you know, every time it looked like it might sputter it didn’t, you know certainly the IPO market closed and opened. But by and large, you know there was always that new hit. Right. You know, whether it was Uber or Airbnb or you know, you know, it’s just there was just, you know, a, you know, a sauna and you know, whatever. Like all these different companies and big, big companies getting created. Right. Yeah. And so I would say the good and the bad of AI is how broadly applicable it is, right? So when you know when Uber launched, right, that created it certainly created a new class. And, you know, for two years all I heard of from my new clients, you know, companies I’m going to be the Uber for X.

John Corcoran 40:27

Right? Yeah, right. I mean, it kind of became a joke for a while. Yeah. That’s right, that’s right.

David Goldenberg 40:32

And the same thing happened with the social networks, right. That, you know, everyone was starting oh, I’m going to be the Facebook of Latin America or whatever, right. You know, the Facebook. But for, you know, music aficionados or whatever it was. Right. And, and so the, the good and the bad of AI is that, you know, Google is and, and Facebook and you know, all these companies are fighting just it’s not like this little niche thing that’s growing up. It is starting at the top with all that investment at the top. And it feels impossible. Unlike where you have like a thousand little companies trying to kind of carve their niche out. It doesn’t feel like that this time. There’s certainly a lot of money on the sidelines, so I’m not seeing that sort of broad uplift at the small end, at the entrepreneur end that I have in other cycles. Now, will something break that? Probably. That’s usually what happens, right? Usually the small, nimble company, you know, Outmaneuvers finds a niche, you know, cracks the system and grows from there. I just haven’t seen that yet.

John Corcoran 41:33

Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. David, this has been fascinating. Thank you for your time. Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you, learn more about VLP Law Group?

David Goldenberg 41:42

So our website probably is the easiest: VLPLawGroup.com.

John Corcoran 41:46

Awesome, David, thank you so much.

David Goldenberg 41:48

Absolutely. Thanks, John.

Outro 41:50

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