Entrepreneurs' 10 Deadly Sins

ANDREW UPDEGROVE, founding partner at Gesmer Updegrove LLP

In business as in life, you need to pick the right role models. Successful entrepreneurs share certain traits. Not surprisingly, unsuccessful entrepreneurs also share similarities, but those tend to be the polar opposite of their more profitable colleagues. How do you recognize the right model to follow?

For the October meeting of the WPI Venture Forum, Andrew Updegrove will address ten entrepreneurial rules to live by -- a discussion of the do's and don'ts of starting and growing a company.

In his presentation, Updegrove will draw on more than 25 years' legal experience representing hundreds of start-up companies. A founding partner at Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston law firm providing a full range of legal services to technology companies of all sizes and types, Updegrove has advised start-ups on their strategic and legal needs, assisting them in their progress from a concept to a mature company. He has also represented mature companies in many areas, including financings, mergers and acquisitions, the redeployment of services and assets onto the Internet, and complex intellectual property matters.

During the meeting, WPI Venture Forum members will have the opportunity to ask Updegrove about the challenges they face today and how they can adopt more successful strategies.

Since 1988, he has represented and helped structure more than 70 worldwide standard-setting consortia, including some of the largest organizations in the world. In support of the global technology community, Updegrove created and maintains ConsortiumInfo.org, the most complete resource on the Internet on standards, and the Consortium Standards Bulletin, a free, monthly eJournal, now in its 32nd issue, for which he received the American National Standards Institute 2005 President's Award for Journalism.

His other awards include being named one of the Top 100 Attorneys in Massachusetts (Law and Politics survey, 2004); a Mass High Tech "Mass All Star" for 2003; and one of the "Best VC Lawyers" in Boston by Digital Industry News in 2001. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of financing, emerging company issues, mergers and acquisitions, and standard setting. Updegrove is a graduate of Yale University and Cornell University Law School.