Get your startup legally ready for accelerator applications

It is usually most useful when your startup is moving from informal founder discussions into external scrutiny. That can include applying to an accelerator, speaking with early investors, starting pilot conversations, or bringing on a first employee or contractor. At that point, gaps around founder roles, ownership expectations, confidentiality and hiring terms often become more visible. This service helps put those core pieces in place in one fixed-fee engagement, rather than leaving them scattered across templates, emails and verbal understandings.

Common issues include founders operating without a written agreement, unclear intellectual property ownership, no confidentiality document for sensitive discussions, and early team arrangements being handled informally. Another frequent problem is having a website or product live without a basic privacy position documented. These issues do not always stop momentum, but they can raise questions in due diligence or programme review. This service addresses the main early-stage documents often requested or expected, while keeping the work at a practical startup level.

The service commonly includes a founders agreement, an employment or contractor agreement, an NDA template and a basic privacy policy, along with a strategy call to discuss how those documents fit your current stage. The exact drafting depends on your startup's setup, such as how many founders are involved, whether someone is contributing part-time, and whether your first team member will be engaged as an employee or contractor. If you need extra work outside the listed items, that can be scoped separately.

No. Many founders use this service before they apply, especially when they want their legal setup to look more organised before submitting materials or entering interviews. It can also be useful if you are not pursuing an accelerator but still need the same early-stage groundwork for pilots, fundraising conversations or onboarding a first hire. The service is not ongoing representation, and it is not a substitute for every legal issue a scaling startup may face, but it can help cover the main starting documents.

After the included documents are finalised, you can use them as part of your startup's legal foundation for accelerator applications, early diligence requests and internal team arrangements. Founders often move on to other work after this stage, such as capital raising documents, customer contracts or share incentive planning. If that happens, we can let you know what further legal work may be worth considering. This service itself is intended for the core early-stage documents listed on the page, rather than long-term legal management of the business.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Accelerator Ready Legal Pack service, pricing starts from $1,200.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.