Business counsel for startups, venture funds, and emerging lower middle-market enterprises

Services

Fractional general counsel to emerging businesses in the lower middle-market

  • Fractional legal executive for growing lower middle-market businesses in traditional industries

  • Support customer, supplier and vendor contracting, as well as key commercial relationships

  • Prepare for exit transactions

  • Implement and manage necessary compliance programs

  • Provide other as-needed legal and operational support

Fractional general counsel to high-growth startups

  • Dedicated, fractional legal partner to rapidly-scaling technology companies

  • Support commercial contracting and sales functions

  • Manage corporate governance and provide general corporate counseling

  • Lead financing transactions, term sheet negotiations and and cap table modeling

  • Drive processes efficiencies and implement a legal operations function

Deal counsel and partner to venture investors and studios

  • Investment transactions (e.g. preferred stock, convertible note, SAFE financings) and due diligence

  • Sale transactions

  • Venture studio/accelerator operations

  • Outside GC on fund formation and structuring transactions

  • Regulatory compliance and fund administration

An image of Will Gillis.

About

Will Gillis

Managing Principal

Will is a venture-focused general counsel with deep experience launching startups, advising investors and venture studios, and structuring investment funds. As Managing Principal of Caritas Venture Advisors, he draws on both law firm and in-house experience providing strategic, business-oriented counsel to high-growth companies, venture funds, and studios. 

Before founding Caritas Venture Advisors, Will served as full time Associate General Counsel and Director of Business Affairs at Alloy Partners (formerly High Alpha Innovation), a leading venture studio and builder. There, he helped launch more than 15 new ventures, structured partnerships with major universities and Fortune 500s, and advised on the formation of venture capital funds—serving as a strategic partner to executive leadership on everything from internal restructurings to regulatory compliance.

Will began his legal career at Perkins Coie LLP in Seattle, where he advised emerging companies and venture investors on corporate governance, financing, and M&A activity. He has represented clients across the venture ecosystem, from early-stage startups to corporate VCs and institutional investors.

Will holds a J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law and an A.B summa cum laude in Politics from Princeton University. A member of the Idaho bar, Will lives in Boise with his wife and four children.