Susan Morgan is an attorney and former entrepreneur, specializing in business start-ups, private company governance, financing, securities regulation and business agreements.

Susan graduated Magna cum Laude from the University of California at Los Angeles, where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Psychology.  Susan earned a Masters degree in Cognitive Psychology, from the University of California at Los Angeles.  Susan then earned her J. D. from Santa Clara University School of Law, where she was awarded an Emory Law Scholarship, and served as Vice-President and a Director of the Santa Clara University Intellectual Property Association.

Susan worked as an attorney for seven years in the corporate group of a large Silicon Valley law firm, in which she focused on counseling private companies.  Susan’s practice areas include incorporations, board resolutions and governance, stock issuances, equity plans and option issuances, financings (including debt, bridge, venture, and restructures), securities compliance, business and commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection. Susan left “large-firm” life, and joined the Katovich & Kassan Law Group, in order to provide a more personal and reasonable, cost-effective service to her clients.

Susan has also been a mentor to Astia (formerly, the Women’s Technology Cluster), and has been a member of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives.  Susan has lectured extensively on legal issues to a variety of organizations, including: Astia, the Technology Venture Corporation, Software Developers’ Forum, and the East Bay Innovation Group.  Susan has been a Guest Lecturer for several years at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business, Entrepreneurship Program; lecturing on Start-up and Corporate Transactions and Intellectual Property Protection. In addition, Susan has taught courses on Business Associations and Intellectual Property Law at the John F. Kennedy University School of Law, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Golden Gate University School of Law, teaching a course on “High Technology Startups: Business and Legal Issues.

Susan is also a highly successful entrepreneur.  She originally co-founded SoftView, a software company which produced the income tax preparation product, MacInTax.  MacInTax became the market-leading product on the Macintosh computer. SoftView was successfully acquired by Chipsoft, the makers of the PC (DOS) tax program, TurboTax, and ChipSoft was subsequently acquired by Intuit.  Susan has since co-founded Equilytics, a software/services company that produces an analytical tool, MergeComp, which is used to compute and model the distributions of proceeds back to the stockholders in a merger or potential future merger.

Susan  recently gave a guest lecture at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA Entrepreneurship class on Managing Risk/Protecting your Venture’s Crown Jewels.” Click here to read her presentation