$38M
Project Caldera
Consumer fintech — company-side, led from term sheet to wire in 41 days.
Counsel for founders, funds & the companies they build
WHEREAS, the party of the first part, hereinafter referred to as… Here's the deal.
Plain answers.Strong deals.Counsel that calls you back.
Marlow Ash is the corporate boutique for people building things — big-firm precision with a smaller firm's attention. Flat fees, straight talk, Texas roots.
850+ venture rounds guided $2.6B in transaction value 120+ exits, both sides of the table Two Texas offices Flat fees on most deals Replies within one business day
We see ourselves as a law firm a company that practices law.
Most firms are a collection of lawyers sharing overhead. We're building something else: an institution designed to endure, that puts people first and uses technology to amplify humanity — not replace it.
That means relationships over timesheets, candor over hedging, and the deal over the ego. If that sounds like marketing, ask anyone who's sent us a Sunday-night question and had a clear answer by Monday morning.
Practice areas
Eight ways we earn the retainer.
SAFEs, priced rounds, and the cap-table math in between. We sit on the company side of the table and read every footnote so you don't have to.
SAFE — POST-MONEYLetters of intent through closing dinners. We run tight processes, flag the real risks, and skip the memo-length preamble.
ASSET PURCHASE AGMT.Fund formation, side letters, and the operational questions that come up late on a Friday. We've sat in the GP seat, and it shows.
LPA — FUND ITrademark strategy, licensing, and IP assignments that hold up in diligence — because someone will eventually check.
IP ASSIGNMENTHandbooks people actually read, option grants done right the first time, and clean exits when the roster changes.
PIIAFrom the first office that isn't a garage to the HQ with your name on it. We negotiate like the rent is ours.
LEASE — NNNTeams, leagues, athletes and NIL — structure, sponsorship and the contracts behind the highlight reel.
SPONSORSHIP AGMT.AI, blockchain and whatever ships next quarter. We help you move fast without breaking the things that matter.
TOKEN WARRANT
How we work
Day zero to the wire.
One firm across the whole arc of a company. Here's the path — and the paper — from incorporation to exit.
01Day zero Formation
Entity choice, founder equity, vesting, IP assignment. The unglamorous paperwork that decides who owns what — done before it's expensive to fix.
CERT. OF FORMATION02First money Seed
SAFEs and seed rounds in plain English. We'll tell you what's market, what's negotiable, and which footnote moves your ownership by four points.
SAFE — $4.5M POST03Priced rounds Growth
Series A through D: charters, board seats, protective provisions. We keep the round moving and your weekends mostly intact.
SERIES A — SPA04Real company Scale
Employment, commercial contracts, IP, the first real lease. The legal plumbing of a company that suddenly has plumbing.
MSA · LEASE · PIIA05The other side Exit
M&A, secondaries, the wire that changes everything. We've guided 120+ exits — calm hands for the loudest week of your career.
MERGER AGMT.
Fees
Strike the billable hour.
Most transactional work at Marlow Ash is flat-fee. You'll know the number before we start — and a phone call will never show up on an invoice.
- Flat fees, quoted up front
- Scope agreed before work starts
- Calls and quick questions: free
- One number. No meter running.
Selected matters
Recent work, minus the gravitas.
$74M
Logistics platform exit
Sell-side M&A for a 120-person operations company.
$25M
Emerging manager, Fund I
Formation, side letters and first close for a first-time GP.
$4.5M
Post-money SAFE round
Then the priced round eight months later. We like repeat customers.
30+
Collective structuring
Entity design and athlete agreements for a university-market NIL collective.
$52M
SaaS acquisition
Two time zones, one closing checklist, zero drama.
The people
Small firm. On purpose.
The person in the pitch is the person on your matter. No handoffs, no junior-associate surprises — just the people whose names are on the door.
Dana Marlow
Founding Partner — Venture & M&A
Off the clock: serious about barbecue
Theo Ash
Founding Partner — Fund Representation
Off the clock: vinyl collector
Priya Raman
Partner — Startups & Venture
Off the clock: marathon runner
Marcus Bell
Counsel — Sports & Gaming
Off the clock: coaches youth basketball
June Okafor
Senior Associate — Emerging Tech
Off the clock: tinkers with robotics
EXHIBIT B — FOUNDER'S LIBRARY
We explain things. It's kind of our whole deal.
A venture glossary, a podcast about deals that almost died, and templates with the scary parts annotated. Pick a term — we'll translate.
DEFINED TERM
SAFE
A Simple Agreement for Future Equity: money now, shares later, priced at the next round. Simple is in the name; the cap table math is not.
- PODCAST
Signing Pages
Deal stories, 25 minutes, no jargon.
- GLOSSARY
The Venture Dictionary
180 terms in plain English.
- GUIDES
Annotated documents
Term sheets with margin notes.
They marked up our term sheet on a Sunday night and explained every change in sentences a human could read. I stopped dreading my own lawyers.
01 / 03
Offices
Texas roots. Delaware paperwork.
Dallas
2400 Commerce Street, Suite 500
Deep Ellum, Dallas, TX
HQ — the one with the good coffee
Austin
1100 East 6th Street, Floor 3
East Austin, TX
Walkable to four taco trucks
Working together
Questions we get before the retainer.
Rarely. Most deals and ongoing work are flat-fee or scoped quotes agreed before we start. The meter-running anxiety is the part of law we set out to delete.
Before you split equity with a co-founder, take anyone's money, or sign anything with the word 'exclusive' in it. The cheapest legal work is the kind done early.
Constantly. Our clients are wherever ambitious companies are; the deals are mostly Delaware paper anyway. Texas is home, not a boundary.
No. You'll know exactly who's on your matter, and the person in the pitch is the person in the deal. Small firm, on purpose.
Nothing. It's a conversation. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.
Tell us what you're building.
Thirty minutes, no meter, no jargon. We'll tell you what we'd do, what it costs, and whether you even need a lawyer yet.
Start a conversationReplies within one business day. Usually faster.