- After raising $268 million, Rahul Magan becomes VP of legal
- There is also a big trend for other e-commerce companies to hire in-house attorneys
Rahul Magan has become the company’s first-ever legal chief, joining ShipBob Inc., an e-commerce logistics company that recently achieved unicorn status.
Earlier this month, Magan joined Chicago-based ShipBob as its vice president of legal following five years at Goodwin Procter in Redwood City, California. When contacted by email, Magan confirmed his new role.
Software and other services are provided by ShipBob to help e-commerce companies improve their operations. Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart are some of the company’s clients.
Magnan became ShipBob’s new legal chief after the company recently raised $200 million in a Series E financing led by Bain Capital Ventures, which has pushed its valuation beyond $1 billion and made it a unicorn.
ShipBob, which is backed by SoftBank Group Corp. and other investors, says the influx of capital will enable it to add 10 new fulfillment centers to its network.
Magan declined to name the law firm operating in the area of fundraising for ShipBob.
With more and more consumers turning to online shopping and last-mile delivery services because of the recent Covid 19 pandemic, ShipBob, a 2014 startup, raised $268 million in the past year.
A public record indicates that Barnes & Thornburg also handled ShipBob’s litigation and trademark work, as well as its initial capital raisings.
More Legal Moves
Several lawyers from Big Law and large retail firms have moved in-house to startups bolstered by Covid-19’s impact on retail in the wake of the e-commerce boom.
Especially in Chicago, where ShipBob is from, emerging companies’ lawyers are in high demand. Earlier this year, Bloomberg Law reported that Cooley was setting up shop in Chicago to get a piece of its burgeoning startup scene.
Zarish Baig, a litigation associate at Squire Patton Boggs in Chicago, was named Groupon’s senior counsel for global privacy in June, a position that saw one of its top outside counsel join Cooley. Matthew Finkelstein, a corporate associate at Sidley Austin, was also hired by Groupon as a senior corporate counsel in July.
An Israeli logistics startup Bringg Delivery Technologies Inc., headquartered in Chicago, raised $100 million in June to become another unicorn. In February, Chicago-based attorney Michael Cohen was promoted to vice president of legal at Bringg, whose investors include the venture capital arm of Salesforce.com Inc.
E-commerce company ChannelAdvisor Corp., based in Morrisville, N.C., announced earlier this year its general counsel, Diana Allen, was stepping down and going into a senior advisory role on June 1. Twiddy, who was U.S. general counsel for Mayne Pharma Group Ltd., succeeded Allen as ChannelAdvisor’s chief legal officer.
Krupa Shah, the head of legal at Fabric, a startup e-commerce platform valued at $850 million in July, also joined the company this year. She left Adtalem Global Education Inc., where she was senior director of strategic initiatives, in February to become general counsel and head of partnerships for Bellevue, Washington-based Fabric.
Argentine startup Tienda Nube, whose valuation reportedly hit $ 3.1 billion this week as it expands throughout Latin America, appointed Pamela Meneguetti, former senior counsel at Uber Technologies Inc. and chief litigation officer of Brazil, as its legal director in April. Nuvemshop is the company’s name in Brazil. It goes by Tienda Nube, which means “cloud store” in English.
