Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
|---|---|
| Industry | Legal services |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Founder | Bob Gunderson, Scott Dettmer |
| Headquarters | Redwood City, California , United States |
Area served | Global |
| Products | Business and commercial legal services for venture-backed and publicly traded technology and life sciences enterprises, and venture capital investors |
| Website | gunder |
Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP (commonly known as Gunderson Dettmer) is a global law firm with its main office located in Silicon Valley, California. The firm focuses solely on business and commercial legal services tailored to venture-backed and publicly traded technology and life sciences enterprises, as well as venture capital investors, and does not engage in litigation.
In addition to its headquarters in Redwood City, Gunderson Dettmer maintains offices in Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Beijing, São Paulo, and Singapore. The firm is regularly recognized as a leading law firm for emerging businesses and venture capital by sources such as Vault.com and U.S. News & World Report.
History
Established in 1995 by partners Bob Gunderson and Scott Dettmer after leaving the tech startup division of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison,Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name Gunderson had earlier co-founded Cooley LLP’s Silicon Valley venture practice during the 1980s alongside Lee Benton.Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name
Growth
Experiencing rapid development throughout the late 1990s during the Dot-com bubble, Gunderson Dettmer became the first U.S. law firm in 1999 to raise starting associate salaries to $125,000. The firm weathered the dot-com bust and early 2000s recession while preserving a robust position within the technology startup industry, contrasting with firms like Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison that collapsed after accepting equity stakes in failing startups.
Recognition
By the early 2010s, Gunderson Dettmer had established itself as the foremost global law firm by volume of venture funding transactions. According to a 2011 report by the Wall Street Journal, it had overtaken Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as the most active legal advisor in venture capital. In 2017, Pitchbook identified Gunderson as the world’s busiest venture capital law firm, while Chambers and Partners acknowledged its leadership in venture capital fund formation across North America and China.
Amid the 2022 downturn in valuations of emerging companies, the firm undertook two rounds of workforce reductions and postponed the start date for its 2022 first-year associate cohort, impacting approximately 30 attorneys. In April 2023, Gunderson executed a significant layoff that reduced its staff by an additional 10%.