About the Author

Mr. Richardson, the creator of the Growth Company Guide 4.0 and growCo.com, is a partner with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a leading commercial law firm with 550+ lawyers in ten offices in the Mid-Atlantic Region. For the last 30 years, Mr. Richardson has advised growing companies and their investors  on a variety of issues impacting business growth. He practices out of the firm's Atlanta, Georgia office.

In his practice, he has helped numerous companies structure borrowings, conduct private placements, price stock offerings, raise and close venture capital financings, establish licensing programs, acquire companies and products, structure joint ventures, develop business strategies, protect technology, and go public. As counsel to private company investors and underwriters, Mr. Richardson has structured venture capital funds and fund offering documents, closed investments in portfolio companies, and counseled on exit strategies, restructurings and conflicts issues.

The Growth Company Guide 4.0 is the expanded and updated text of a guide for entrepreneurs and investors first published with Venture Magazine in 1987 under the title The Venture Magazine Complete Guide to Venture Capital (NAL). Mr. Richardson's experience advising both operating companies and venture capitalists gives The Growth Company Guide a unique, insider's, "both-sides" perspective on legal and business issues faced by growing companies. The result is an informed, practical and useable resource for business operators, advisors and investors.

Mr. Richardson is a co-founder of the leading trade association for private company investors in the Southeastern United States, the Atlanta Venture Forum, where he has served for more than a decade as an officer and director. He has also served as a director or advisory board member of Georgia's Business and Technology Alliance, the Mercer University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Financial Manager magazine. Mr. Richardson presently serves on the boards of two growing technology companies.

A 1972 phi beta kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Economics from Albion College, Mr. Richardson obtained his law degree with distinction from Duke University School of Law in 1975, where he also served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal. He has practiced law since 1975 in Atlanta, Georgia.