Bio

Melissa Marks represents technology companies in a variety of fields including consumer products and services, online media and ad tech, mobile and social technologies, software and SaaS, hardware, and clean technologies, and also advises venture capital funds investing in those businesses. She is experienced in transactions at all stages of the technology lifecycle, regularly advising entrepreneurs as they form businesses, counseling growing companies and investors through rounds of financing, structuring tender offers, M&A deals, public offerings and other late-stage transactions, and providing day-to-day guidance on corporate governance, employment, and intellectual property matters. In addition to advising technology companies and venture capitalists as outside counsel, Melissa was the General Counsel of Boxee, a streaming media hardware and software company, until it was acquired by Samsung Electronics. Having served as part of a start-up management team, she knows first-hand that having flexible, business-minded, incisive counsel is of critical importance to the success of high-growth businesses, and enjoys playing that role for her clients. Melissa is also a founding member of Gunderson Dettmer’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee, and committed to fostering diversity both within the firm as well as in the broader technology and venture capital community. She began her legal career as an associate at the New York office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, and was a pastry chef in her long-ago first career. She currently lives with her husband, two young children, and two cats in a happily hectic Brooklyn apartment.