StartMate releases investment raising docs

Start-ups that can't raise investment because of prohibitive legal costs now have an alternative, after local mentor-backed investment firm StartMate released the documentation that it used to invest in its first five start-ups.

The documents were used by StartMate to facilitate investments on behalf of the organisation's founders, and co-founder Niki Scevak said that he hopes releasing the documents will help streamline the investment process by eliminating excessive legal fees.

"We used these documents to invest in the first five Startmate companies, and will use them again to invest in our next round," Scevak said.

"We thought that they could be useful for any kind of start-ups in Australia, and hope that they can reduce the amount of money spent on legal fees in the beginning."

It will also mean that companies are properly structured to gather more investment down the line, Scevak said.

The documents are free to start-ups, and can also be used for other administrative tasks, such as establishing a company and developing a constitution.

"Also, they can be useful for companies who are raising small amounts of capital, but also those just getting set-up.

"Part of the set of documents is simply for incorporating your company and having a workable constitution that would be needed for professional investors to consider putting in money."

They are based on a set of documents in the US called series seed, but adapted for Australian law by law firm DLA Piper.

Docs and more info are available here.