Silicon Legal Strategy Welcomes Two New Associates, Jessica Rybka and Ryan Southerland

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - October 21, 2016) - Silicon Legal Strategy is pleased to announce that associates Jessica Rybka and Ryan Southerland have joined the firm in its San Francisco office.

Jessica specializes in the representation of emerging growth companies. She works with entrepreneurs from formation through later financing rounds and has experience with corporate governance and day-to-day commercial transactions.

Prior to joining Silicon Legal, Jessica practiced at Pacific Crest Law Partners, LLP where she advised a diverse client base with commercial and financing agreements, intellectual property licensing and corporate governance matters. Most recently, at Accelerate Legal, Inc. Jessica focused on advising Latin American startups on general corporate matters and cross-border transactions. Jessica received her law degree and MBA from the University of San Francisco and her undergraduate degree from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.

Ryan works with technology companies and investors on a variety of legal matters including formation, financing, regulatory matters, mergers and acquisitions, and general business matters.

Before joining SLS, Ryan served as product counsel for Scratch Services, Inc., a financial technology startup improving the loan servicing industry. Ryan started his practice at Goodwin Proctor LLP where he represented startups and investors as an associate in the emerging company group. He focused primarily on venture and growth equity transactions. Ryan received his law degree from Stanford University and his undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"Silicon Legal has an impressive client list and a wonderful team," said Rybka. "I love working with startups and entrepreneurs, and was attracted to the friendly and collaborative, yet extremely efficient, environment here at SLS." Southerland echoes these statements, "Silicon Legal's outside-general-counsel approach to client service makes it an ideal platform to help entrepreneurs build their companies. I'm pleased to join this business-minded team on their mission to help clients succeed."

"We're thrilled to welcome Jessica and Ryan to Silicon Legal Strategy. We know our clients will benefit from the business experience and client service mindset that they bring," said Andre Gharakhanian, partner at Silicon Legal Strategy. "Silicon Legal continues to nab remarkable talent from other firms and in-house roles and we expect continued growth as we close out 2016."

About Silicon Legal Strategy

Silicon Legal Strategy is the premier boutique law firm providing targeted, bottom-line-oriented advice to technology startups, innovative entrepreneurs and seasoned investors. Trained at the top firms in Silicon Valley, our attorneys and staff are incredibly passionate about technology and have extensive experience representing early stage companies and investors. We are a known quantity in Silicon Valley, and work with or sit across the table from every major law firm in the area. Perhaps most importantly, we ourselves are entrepreneurs. We truly understand the challenges of a startup -- like building and motivating a team, creating repeatable processes to ensure continued customer satisfaction at scale and dealing with infrastructure issues. We face these challenges every day -- and as a result, are able to deliver more relevant, bottom-line-oriented advice. Put simply, we actually "get" what entrepreneurs are going through.