Entrepreneurs often don’t give a lot of consideration to their shareholder agreements until they start looking for capital and are quizzed by potential investors or when there is a falling out with another shareholder.

These documents are actually a really important aspect of any business and we always recommend that you invest some and effort looking at these elements of your business – especially if your plan is to pitch for capital.

Sometimes it is useful to learn from other peoples mistakes and to see how potential investors would view certain structures and for that reason we urge you to take a look at this recent episode of “Dragons Den” in the UK where a promising investor pitch came completely unstuck around their shareholding structure:

While we will always recommend that entrepreneurs consult legal professionals to draw up important documents, we have also prepared a number of legal templates HERE to assist smaller entrepreneurs.