John Neeson | Start Strong Team
John is a corporate lawyer who specialises in mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, restructurings and, in particular, private equity and venture capital transactions. He has worked on extensively on both investor and investee roles over a range of sectors, with a particular focus on the technology, medical devices and pharmaceutical sectors. Along with Rory O’Malley, John is the co-head of the Start-Up team in McCann FitzGerald and has been a driving force in developing the Start Strong programme.
Tell us a little bit about your career to date?
Law was a natural choice for me as a number of my close family members are practicing lawyers already. I studied law at Trinity and went on to work in a criminal law firm in Dublin before going to Australia and securing a job in the Attorney General’s office in Sydney. I returned to Ireland in 2008 and joined McCann FitzGerald in 2009, where I qualified as a solicitor into the corporate group in 2012. Since then I have worked closely with a large number of early-stage companies through initial friends and family/seed rounds, Series A fundraisings and exits.
'As a legal advisor, you really feel like part of the team from an early stage, which makes the subsequent achievements all the more rewarding.'
What attracts you to the start-up world?
The start-up world is full of entrepreneurial genius which is generally a foreign concept to many lawyers. Hopefully some of it will rub off on me someday!
What do you enjoy about working with start-ups?
Working with entrepreneurs and founders is quite unique – they all share a wonderful and infectious enthusiasm for their business. As a legal advisor, you really feel like part of the team from an early stage, which makes the subsequent achievements all the more rewarding.
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