An advisor agreement for a startup is a two-sided legal deal, more precisely a contract between a startup and a specific person or company that will be an advisor for a specific area.

This agreement regulates some of the most important things for the very beginning and further development of the startup. It defines the exact work of the adviser, his compensation agreed in different ways in terms of whether it will be financed with money and the right to shares, confidentiality of information, intellectual property rights, the right of the contracting parties in case of breach of contract and of course termination conditions.

In practice, certain types of these contracts appear and they are most often contracts with:

• financial advisors.
• tech advisors
• legal advisors
• marketing advisors

Compensation for work as one of the important issues for startup companies is, as we mentioned, either in certain cash payments or in rights to shares, i.e. shares in the company. Also, one of the important things in the contract with the advisor is the issue of intellectual property.

Intellectual property in the contract is important because, for example, your advisor implements an idea that brings the startup a good product, and it is important to determine whether the advisor has any rights to the created intellectual property or whether those rights belong to the startup. This issue is important both because of the transfer of rights to the startup and because of the possible additional compensation that the startup should provide to the advisor considering that it uses its intellectual property rights.

When concluding such a contract with a startup, it is very important to regulate in detail the issue of breach of contract as well as other important issues such as termination of the contract and confidentiality of information.