Bio

Richard Honen is the leader of Phillips Lytle’s Startups Practice Team. He focuses his practice in corporate, finance and venture capital law, as well as complex mergers and acquisitions and commercial litigation. Rich provides corporate counsel to a broad spectrum of companies – from startup to Fortune 50 – and has lectured extensively, particularly on topics of corporate law, venture capital and entrepreneurship. Rich has guest lectured at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, Albany Law School of Union University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University at Albany, Ithaca College and Siena College, and has served as an adjunct professor at Union Graduate College (now Clarkson University). Rich authored the chapter on “Legal Issues Affecting Private Equity and Venture Backed Companies” in Representing Private Equity and Venture Capital Backed Portfolio Companies (Aspatore/Thomson Reuters 2010) and was an Editorial Board Member and a chapter editor of “White’s New York Business Entities” (LexisNexis Matthew Bender), a leading treatise on New York corporate law. He is a former general editor for the LexisNexis Practice Insights (LexisNexis Online) and has written many articles on business and corporate issues for local publications. Rich has served as a judge and mentor in numerous business plan events throughout New York State, including the New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC) – New York’s premier collegiate regional and statewide business plan competition – 43 North, the New York State High School Business Plan Competition, Venture B Plan and competitions sponsored by FuzeHub, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Communitech (Canada). Rich testified before a Joint Session of the New York State Legislature on behalf of Universities of Upstate New York Venture Forum (UNYTECH) in support of a proposed $25,000,000 seed stage fund for university-based startups. This grew out of his testimony regarding the need for a State-sponsored seed investment fund before the Task Force on Diversifying the New York State Economy through Industry-Higher Education Partnerships. Rich has spoken as a panelist for the New York State Writer’s Institute on “The First Amendment & Free Speech Under Attack” (with Floyd Abrams and others; moderated by Ashleigh Banfield), and is a recurring panelist on “The Roundtable” on WAMC, a local NPR Affiliate. In addition, he has spoken at the annual meetings of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) discussing “Large Company-Small Company Collaborations,” the National Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) Conference discussing venture investing, the Vermont Investors’ Forum and the American Ceramics Society.