Every year Bootlaw likes to travel to California to, err, keep its finger firmly on pulse of whats hot and whats not.  This year Danvers could not be prised away from the TV. He was busy watching the election or something.   So Barry travelled on behalf of Bootlaw.  Its a tough job. But someone’s gotta do it.

It’s been a whistle stop tour made shorter by volcanic ash and delayed planes. Bootlaw met various investors and companies and made time to attend the Think Equity Conference on Venture Capital.

There was barely time to go out for dinner with @paulcarr and @bandrew but Bootlaw managed to squeeze it in.

A few thoughts on the visit.  First, California. Whats not to like.  Bootlaw loves San Francisco and the vibrancy of the Valley.  The great weather and fun company help.  But its more than that.  We never fail to be inspired after a visit.

One of the panels interesting to anyone aspiring to exit in the future was a panel on M&A, Navigating Among the Behemoths with a panel of representatives from Corporate Development at Yahoo (Michael Burnett), Electronic Arts (Mike Foley) and McAfee (Joel Bauman) and our very own Alisa Won from Winston & Strawn’s San Francisco office.  Alisa helps Bootlawyers moving accross to the US and has previously presented for Bootlaw at SXSWi.

It was great to hear the panel talking with Bootlaw common sense tips and we thought we’d share the top three takeaways from the panel:

First, keep your house in order.  The panel unanimously agreed that a common problem easily avoided was to look after the basics.  Make sure that you get proper assignments for your IP and do basic stuff like ensuring that you have copies of all your contracts.  Sound familiar?

Second,  don’t rely upon summaries and opportunity notes.  Build relationships early and get that meeting.  In other words network like crazy and leverage your contacts to get some face time. It’s sad. But true. This is the only way to get yourself heard above the noise.  By the way don’t leave it until you’re exiting to do it.  Build relationships early.  Give time for them to develop and simply keep your contacts updated.  No high pressure sales techniques.  Rolling up when you have a termsheet in hand and asking them to move fast with a competing offer is not the way to go.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to get involved in a transaction.  Don’t take your eye off the ball. Transactions can be time consuming but its critical to make sure that the business keeps hitting the numbers.  If the numbers go below budget in the run up to closing a transaction the risk is your buyer will revise all his numbers and extrapolate projections from those.  Not the budgeted amounts.

The easy way to do all of this of course is to make sure you have some friendly advisers who can take the strain…Who you gonna call? Bootlawyers…