We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shaheen below.

Alright, Shaheen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My firm has always been focused on supporting social enterprise startups and the social entrepreneur community. In the summer of 2021, I received an interesting letter agreement from a potential investor from a client. Typically, these letters focus on a list of gets that the investor wants (information rights, participation rights, board observer rights). But in this case, the letter was a 5-page manifesto focused on DEIBJ asking my client to commit itself to these values. I was so moved.

With that letter, I started reviewing my practice and doing some research. What I discovered, floored me. In 15 years of being a startup attorney, I had never done a deal with a woman lead investor (and given the deals I’ve had the fortune to work on, if there was a woman’s desk to come across, it should have). Then I dug in a bit more and learned that women general partners of venture funds (i.e., check writers) only make up about 12% of all general partners in the sector. And the stats kept getting worse. On an annual basis, over $330 billion is deployed in venture capital and only 2% is invested in women-founded startups! That is the case despite the fact that teams with women founders on average are more likely to exit and have a higher internal rate of return (IRR) — 112% versus 48% for men-only teams.

So since then, Esse Law has committed itself to a new purpose. We stand for supporting marginalized founders and helping them get access to capital and we are working to start our own seed fund by 2025 so we can become checkwriters and help contribute to shifting the ecosystem.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Esse Law is a boutique law firm providing strategic legal advice to sophisticated serial entrepreneurs, startups, growth companies, and venture capitalists. We specialize in corporate law, intellectual property, and debt and equity financings and make corporate law hustle as hard as our entrepreneurs. From inception to exit, we guide, strategize with, and propel entrepreneurs and the investors that power their engines.

At Esse Law, we value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and are committed to empowering marginalized founders, including women and those in the BIPOC community. We believe that our clients’ success is tied to our commitment to these values.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Two things helped me build my reputation within the startup ecosystem.

1) Being authentically me. When I first started my practice, I tried to be all things to all clients. That did not work for me or my clients. Once I decided to boldly be exactly who I am and put out there clearly and unapologetically what I stand for, like-minded people naturally gravitated towards me and my practice. This helped build the reputation that I wanted to have and organically grow.

2) Being incredibly invested in my clients’ growth and success by being as flexible and nimble as they are. As a startup attorney, I consider it my job to be as creative strategically as my founders. Many of my clients have told me that I’m an entrepreneur who also happens to be a lawyer. I think when they say that they mean that I see law as a tool, not a shackle and I will always do what I can to help my clients execute on their strategy.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Although I regularly saw my founder struggle from being a founder to becoming a CEO, I didn’t recognize it in myself. A year or so ago, I hired a business coach to help me strategize about the growth of my practice – remember my related goal is to build a seed fund for marginalized founders – and uncover my blind spots that were creating obstacles to my goals. One of the first things he flagged was this issue of me continuing to be in “founder” mode versus “CEO” mode. So one of the things we had to do was have me unlearn this habit of doing everything and shift to a model of capacity – which meant hiring, training, delegating and building out operational systems.

This process has been so humbling on some days and so exhilarating on others. Lots of personal self-reflection and learning while I’m simultaneously teaching and training others. Continuing to grow and learn has also reinspired me and my business in other ways, I’m sure much I haven’t even discovered yet.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.esselaw.com
• Instagram: @theesselaw
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaheensheik/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EsseLaw

Image Credits
Professional shots: Short and Sweet Photography