Joe Hadzima, longtime instructor of MIT's 15.393 Nuts and Bolts of New Ventures, walks through the legal questions new founders run into first. He covers securities law and what it means when a startup issues stock to founders or early investors, intellectual property protection for a young company's core assets, and the tax issues that come with founder equity and compensation decisions. The session is framed as practical orientation rather than formal legal training, aimed at engineers and would-be founders who need to know what to ask a lawyer before they get into trouble. Hadzima draws on his own experience advising startups and teaching this IAP course at MIT, using concrete scenarios rather than abstract doctrine to show where legal exposure typically shows up early in a company's life. At 84 minutes, it runs as a full classroom session, part of MIT OpenCourseWare's release of the January 2025 offering of 15.393.