PARTNER – CORPORATE TRANSACTIONAL GROUP

Venture & Emerging Growth | M&A

San Francisco | Los Angeles
ereed@prosperalaw.com
(424) 239-1916

Erika H. Reed is a partner in the firm’s Corporate Transactional Group with a practice focusing on Venture & Emerging Growth and M&A Erika is a true venture financing specialist with vast experience advising high growth private companies, management teams founders and investors. She has led the charge on hundreds of preferred stock financings, seed rounds, angel investments, convertible note bridge rounds, SAFE financings and restructurings, and regularly advises on board and corporate governance matters, founder and investor rights during a portfolio company exit and general corporate strategy. She has also served as outside counsel on numerous buy and sell-side M&A transactions, and advises clients on exit strategy and transaction planning. She works with companies and investors in a broad array of industries, including technology, digital marketing and media, insurtech, fintech, internet retail, business services, entertainment and sports, beauty and healthcare, food and beverage, life sciences, therapeutics, biotech, software, renewable energy and other high growth verticals.

Erika cares deeply about promoting women on boards of directors and female entrepreneurs, as well as advising companies focused on social impact. She is an active member of the Queen’s Bench Bar Association of the San Francisco Bay Area, which helps build bridges for women lawyers through networking and advocacy. She also supported (and the firm has been a regular sponsor of), TuesdayNights (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TuesdaynightsWomen/), a group dedicated to connecting female founders, executives and investors with a mission to collaborate and create social impact and activism. She also is the President of the San Mateo Parents Club.

Erika’s highest priority is establishing a strong relationship with her clients by providing effective and efficient legal counsel tailored to a client’s specific needs, whether the client is a VC making a small follow-on investment or a later stage company undergoing a major transaction, and she believes communication is the key to an excellent attorney-client relationship. Above all, she truly enjoys the practice of law, getting to know her clients and working together to help realize each client’s vision.

Activities & Recognitions:

• Active member of Queen’s Bench Association of the San Francisco Bay Area (dedicated to women lawyers)
• Member of TuesdayNights 
  (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TuesdaynightsWomen/);
• President, San Mateo Parents Club;
• Prior legal Resource Partner with the Berkeley SkyDeck Accelerator Program;
• Prior (repeat) judge at multiple pitch contests held at the South Bay Pitch and Demo Fests hosted by Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs, one of the largest grassroots movements of founders and developers in the Bay Area;
• Organizer and Judge of the Innovation Pitch Fest hosted by the Silicon Valley Open Innovation Group, a startup pitch competition and networking event for local entrepreneurs;
• Previously named a Northern California Rising Star in Thomson Reuters’ Super Lawyers magazine.

Practice Highlights:

• Regularly advises a domestic and international venture capital funds on numerous lead and follow-on investments;
• Represents numerous company clients through early and late stage rounds of financing, secondary sales and restructurings;
• Advises various celebrity teams on their angel investments and other equity transactions; and
• Acts as deal counsel on numerous acquisitions including to private and public company buyers.

Prior to joining Prospera Law, Erika was a Senior Associate in the Silicon Valley offices of King & Spalding, and a corporate associate in the venture and securities practices of DLA Piper and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), where she focused her venture practice on emerging growth companies and M&A. Prior to her legal practice, worked at JETRO, a San Francisco non-profit geared toward establishing new companies in Japan. She also spent several years living and working in Japan, including an internship at a Japanese law firm, and maintains conversational Japanese and a deep love for the country and its culture.

Erika is passionate about fitness, and in her spare time can often be found competing in races on the mountain trails or participating in other athletic endeavors. She is also a (now retired) IFBB pro bodybuilder whose claim to fame in the sport was winning the physique division at the Lou Ferrigno Pro Classic and meeting the legend himself!

Erika earned her J.D. from Boston University School of Law, with honors in the Intellectual Property and International Law concentrations. She received a Master of Arts in International Relations from Boston University and a B.A. (With Distinction) from the University of Michigan where she majored in Japanese and Psychology. She is admitted to practice law in California.