Gary Paranzino has directed his own law practice, Paranzino Law, focused on all matters affecting the most exciting growth areas in business -- technology, life sciences and FinTech -- for over two decades.
His clients include a vibrant mix of venture capital (VC) funded, private equity (PE) funded, and publicly-traded technology companies, CEOs, CROs, CTOs, CFOs, CMOs and other C-level, EVP, SVP and VP-level corporate executives (and those well on their way to those positions), start-up founders and entrepreneurs, VC and financial industry professionals, law firms, contractors, expert witnesses and other professionals in their most sensitive, strategic and valuable matters.
Previously, Paranzino served as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of two groundbreaking technology companies, PointCast (which pioneered advertising-supported desktop distribution of customized premium news content to end-users via the internet), and the first major luxury goods e-commerce company, Ashford.com.
In these roles, Paranzino served as Corporate Secretary to each of the Boards of Directors, and had the role of V.P. of Business Development added to his responsibilities by the CEO of Ashford.
Earlier, Paranzino was a core member of the legal defense teams that contested the largest and most prominent Wall Street cases of the era, involving billions in trading losses from financial derivatives, and insider trading, stock parking and stock manipulation in the high-yield "junk" bond market.
Gary Paranzino earned his J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was elected Research Editor of the Cornell Law Review, and his A.B. in Government and Economics from Cornell University.
While a corporate executive, he completed the Stanford Law School General Counsel Institute program.
Paranzino is a member of the California and New York bars and is admitted to practice in several federal courts.
Gary Paranzino has a rare combination of deep experience in the two sides of law practice -- as both a corporate practitioner negotiating, structuring, advising on and drafting complex business agreements, and also as a seasoned New York litigator, who knows what it takes in head-to-head battles occurring in litigation (successfully arguing appeals and motions in court, questioning dozens of witnesses in depositions and drafting innumerable legal briefs).
Before joining the tech industry as a lawyer, a teen-aged Paranzino wrote a faithfully accurate multi-player version of Monopoly in 4028 bytes of memory on his Radio Shack TRS-80 and created his own sports-themed games.
For relaxation as a Wall Street litigator, he wrote the content and coded the HTML for one of the first popular web sites back in 1995.
The site, about the Rolling Stones, served to advocate for greater appreciation of the Mick Taylor era of the band (1969-1974), which is now widely acknowledged to be their Golden Age. Paranzino maintained the site for seven years until he retired it in 2002.
© Gary A. Paranzino 2023