The godfather: a lawyer with an entrepreneurial bent, Fred Hutchison is the go-to guy for Triangle start-up companies.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: North Carolina lawyer specializing in start-up companies

Duke University neurobiologists Larry Katz and Don Lo knew they needed a lawyer. Neither had any business background, but, on their own, they had begun talking in early summer 1997 with a Washington, D.C., venture capitalist. They wanted to start a company around their technology for developing drugs to treat brain diseases. The VC was leaning on them to sign a term sheet - the critical document in structuring a finance deal. They knew they shouldn't without an attorney. But after more than a decade in academe, they weren't sure how to go about finding one who specialized in high tech.

Lo put a call in to David Barry, CEO of Triangle Pharmaceuticals Inc., one of the state's most ballyhooed biotech companies. Lo barely knew Barry, former head of worldwide research for Wellcome PLC. But his wife and Barry's had both attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. Barry took the call, and his answer to Lo's question was concise: "Fred Hutchison is the only biotech lawyer in North Carolina worth talking to."

Hutchison is the godfather of the Triangle start-up scene, a guy who, in the early '80s, looked at Research Triangle Park - then just a tax haven for huge technology companies from elsewhere - and saw in it and the Triangle's three research universities the seeds of a Silicon Valley Southeast. A handful of Triangle lawyers - Jim Verdonik at Kilpatrick Stockton, Larry Robbins at Wyrick Robbins, Gerald Roach at Smith Anderson - have made names for themselves as high-tech specialists, but none has focused as intently on start-ups nor been willing to take the risks Hutchison, 49, has.

Since starting his own firm in May 1996, he has done 75 deals, all of them with early-stage companies, most in biotech and information technology. "In terms of volume of deals and effect on the economy, Fred has had a greater impact than anybody," says Dennis Dougherty, a venture capitalist with Durham-based Intersouth Partners.

Hutchison represented the two companies that gave Intersouth its best returns. In 1994, he helped Durham-based Integrated Silicon Systems Inc. do an initial public offering that raised $30 million. (It has since been bought by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Avant! Corp.) And this March he handled the $45 million sale of Raleigh-based Internet-software developer Accipiter Inc., to Andover, Mass.-based CMG Information Services Inc. - thought to be the biggest deal ever for a private Tar Heel software maker.

Like the entrepreneurs he represents, Hutchison is a risk taker. He quit a secure job as a member of the management committee at Petree Stockton, now Kilpatrick Stockton, to start Hutchison & Mason PLLC. And, in addition to his fees, he takes equity in his clients. That's a controversial practice because it can lead to a lawyer not getting paid as much - and sometimes not at all - if a little company folds because it can't raise money.

To help make sure that doesn't happen, Hutchison has assembled an informal team, a syndicate even, to help manage start-ups he represents - another technique that separates him from other technology lawyers. Tim Gupton, a Raleigh CPA, often steps in as a part-time CFO. He and Hutchison have done 30 deals together. A less frequent but just as critical participant is Max Wallace. He's an "angel," a seasoned entrepreneur who'll put his money and management savvy into a young company. The trio worked together to launch Durham-based Trimeris Inc., and they're doing it again on Cogent Neuroscience Inc., the company that grew out of Barry's recommendation to Lo.

Lo and Hutchison met in July 1997 at...