2024 DIVERSITY DATABASE UNDERWRITER Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP

Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian is a Silicon Valley firm at heart, and it has already outgrown its status as a premier boutique firm in the technological world. The firm has expanded throughout the United States and internationally over the past 15 years. With offices in Ann Arbor, Austin, Beijing, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, São Paulo, Silicon Valley, and Singapore, and extensive work in Latin America, the firm is an international specialist in emerging growth market matters for corporate and venture capital clients.

Emerging Growth Market, Boom or Bust

In 1995, Bob Gunderson, Scott Dettmer, and four other partners jumped from the now-defunct Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison ship and started a Silicon Valley firm immediately prior to the region's technology boom. In the subsequent five years, the firm exploded alongside the region's dotcoms and startups, growing to 130 attorneys by the year 2000. Gunderson Dettmer maintained an impressive client list and a reputation as a go-to technology and life sciences firm in a climate in which other tech-focused firms failed to thrive. Its success was at least partially achieved through its ride on another boom: the growth equity and venture capital boom. The firm now enjoys a leading share of the market for venture capital fund legal work. PitchBook, Chambers International, The Legal 500, FinanceAsia, and U.S. News have all recognized the firm for both its Venture Capital and Technology law practices.

Corporate Giants

Today, Gunderson Dettmer serves the venture capital market and counsels startups through its Corporate and Securities; Data Privacy; Executive Compensation; Growth Equity; Strategic Transactions & Licensing; Employment and Labor; Mergers and Acquisitions; Public Offerings/Public Companies; Tax; and Venture Capital and Growth Equity Fund Formation and Representation practices. The firm prides itself in representing clients “in every stage of a company’s lifecycle—from formation through maturity, acquisition, or transition into public equity markets and beyond.”

In the acquisitions market, the firm has helped negotiate the sale of companies to tech goliaths such as Adobe, Cisco, IBM, Meta, Slack, and Uber; pharmaceutical companies such as Amgen, Eli Lilly, GSK, and Johnson & Johnson; and retail giants such as Walmart and Amazon. Gunderson Dettmer clients have included companies such as Anduril, Bowery, NotCo, Dataminr, Flexport, Daily Harvest, and Cityblock and venture funds such as Accel, Greycroft, Eclipse VC, and Benchmark.

A Summer Surprise

Earlier in its history, Gunderson Dettmer made a name for itself as a leader in the high-starting-salary war. The firm is among those that gave summer bonuses in 2018, and in May 2019, the firm announced that it would once again pay summer bonuses. More recently, the firm made a splash when it was early to match 2021 special bonuses with payouts in both spring and fall. According to the firm, “almost half of associates earn bonuses above the scale set by other major firms.” And even pre-COVID, the firm had a progressive view of flexible work arrangements; for example, it provided technology for remote working to all attorneys and collaborative workspaces in several offices, similar to the initiatives of their startup clients.

• Gunderson Dettmer represented client Xaira Therapeutics, an AI biotechnology company, from formation and through $1 billion in funding.

   

• Gunderson Dettmer represented client OrbiMed, a global healthcare investment firm, in closing more than $4.3 billion in capital commitments for its latest private investment funds.

   

• Gunderson Dettmer represented biotech client Kelonia Therapeutics in its $800 million research collaboration and licensing agreement with Xyphos Biosciences.

   

• Gunderson Dettmer represented clients Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, as lead investors, and Index Ventures, Greenoaks and Wellington Management, as participants, in the $1 billion Series E financing of Wiz, a global leader in Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).

   

• #1 VC Law Firm Globally for 10 Straight Years, 2024—PitchBook

   

• Mergers and Acquisitions Top Middle-Market Deals of the Year, 2024—The Middle Market 17th Annual

   

• Tier 1 in Start-up and Venture Capital (Singapore office), 2024—Legal 500 Asia-Pacific

   

• Law Firm of the Year in Venture Capital, 2024—Best Lawyers

   

• AI Excellence Winner for Generative AI, 2024 – The Business Intelligence Group