Mariana Antcheva
General Counsel and Secretary
Lytro, Inc.
Mountain View, CA, USA
6:20 am
The alarm turns on NPR. My husband goes jogging, but I stay in bed. Sometimes I check email while I’m horizontal, but not today.
7:20 am
I get up to say goodbye to my 14-year-old daughter and get ready for work. I say, “Hurry up!” to my six-year-old son at least 20 times.
8:00 am
We are out the door on our way to the kindergarten drop off.
8:45 am
I arrive at work, triage the accumulated emails and respond to the urgent or easy ones.
9:15 am
My morning ritual: A cup of tea and fruit for breakfast from the cafeteria. My careful fruit peeling and cutting draws comparisons to surgery from my coworkers. I use this time to mentally go over my plan for the day, prioritize tasks and start thinking about some of the more complicated legal issues.
9:30 am
HR has asked me to review updated compensation documents. I provide some editorial suggestions, reread my go-to article about 409A and triple-check the 409A-related language in the documents. It always makes me nervous.
10:30 am
I review several draft documents and, after some research, respond to various legal questions by coworkers. The operative word in my title is “general.” Today, in this hour alone, I deal with an immigration issue, an IP issue and a capitalization issue.
11:30 am
I go over the headlines in the ACC Newsstand every day. This helps me keep up-to-date with relevant legislative and case law developments, as well as learn about rare — but possible — legal issues that I may encounter.
12:00 pm
On busy days I have lunch “al desco,” but I make an effort to have lunch with my coworkers most days. It builds trust and rapport. Today’s conversation topic: Best Practices in Relieving Nasal Congestion in Babies.
12:45 pm
I work with the sales team on several distributor agreements. When I need a break, I mentally travel to the countries of the various distributors and imagine what it would be like to buy a Lytro camera there.
2:00 pm
Lytro is a privately held, VC-backed company and over time our capitalization structure has become quite complex. I periodically audit our capitalization records to verify that they are accurate and up-to-date. Usually, this is a five-minute process. Today, I notice a discrepancy and it takes me 90 minutes to find the cause and fix it.
3:30 pm
I go over several terms with a prospective consultant in a draft consulting agreement. The agreement has somewhat unusual terms, and it is helpful that the consultant is actively engaged in reviewing it.
4:00 pm
I discuss a proposed patent filing with the product management team. We agree to move forward with the filing, and I contact Lytro’s outside patent counsel with the news.
4:30 pm
I serve as a liaison to our investors. Today, I provide capitalization information to one of them and a quarterly update to another.
5:30 pm
I strategize my approach to a series of export controls analyses that we need to perform over the coming weeks.
6:00 pm
I go home. My seven-minute commute in Silicon Valley is the equivalent of winning the lottery.
6:07 pm
Family time! I try to find out how my teenager’s day was and have a tenacious negotiation with my kindergartner about the amount of video game time. My husband and I chat about our days. We eat leftovers for dinner and play “Two Truths and a Lie.”
9:00 pm
Kids are in bed. I check my work email and respond to a few urgent messages.
9:30 pm
This would be the time to focus on a difficult drafting project or another issue that requires quiet time and intense concentration. Fortunately, no such projects are on the agenda for tonight. Instead, I read the latest Lee Child novel. I am a detective novel junkie.
11:00 pm
My husband and I watch the evening news.
11:30 pm
Good night.
