The Quiet Architect -- Making Deals Safe in the Midwest's Boldest VC Firm
When Redbud VC writes a check to a first-time founder in Tulsa or a biometric software shop in Kansas City, Jordan Lewis is the one making sure the paperwork doesn't blow it all up. General Counsel. Tax strategist. The lawyer who was warning about biometric privacy before most people had fingerprint-unlocked their phones.
Jordan Lewis runs legal for two of Columbia, Missouri's most consequential private capital shops - simultaneously. That sentence alone tells you something about how he operates.
As General Counsel at Redbud VC and VP & General Counsel at The Premiere Group, Lewis sits at the intersection of venture capital and family office management, handling the full legal architecture of organizations that touch real estate, steel, heavy equipment, startups, and fund-of-funds investing. His job title is singular. His job description is not.
He came to this role the long way. A master's in accountancy from Mizzou with a taxation emphasis. Law school at Southern Illinois. Bar admission in Illinois first (2015), then Missouri (2016). Years as a litigator at Carmody MacDonald in St. Louis, where he defended business clients in the emerging world of cybersecurity and consumer privacy law. And then - while still doing all of that - he started writing about it. Published pieces in Missouri In-House Counsel that warned Midwest businesses about biometric privacy exposure years before it became a standard corporate checklist item.
Technology is constantly evolving, powerful, and has become a digital storage locker for most of our personal and professional information, which necessitates more security of biometric data.
- Jordan Lewis, Missouri In-House Counsel, 2021He wasn't just writing for the byline. He was mapping terrain that would become essential - the same instinct that now serves him in VC, where the legal landscape shifts faster than any regulatory body can track.
When Redbud VC launched, built by the Schlacks brothers who turned EquipmentShare into a multi-billion dollar construction tech company from Columbia, Missouri, they needed someone who could hold the fund's legal architecture together without slowing down the pace of dealmaking. Lewis was that person. More than a decade of experience in the kinds of complexity - M&A, tax, governance, fund structuring - that early-stage VC throws at you in concentrated bursts.
What makes him unusual isn't the dual role. It's the background. Most VC general counsels come from big-law securities practices. Lewis came from litigation and tax - with an accountancy degree underneath the law degree. That combination means he can read a term sheet and a tax return with equal fluency, follow the money across entity structures, and spot the downstream consequences of a deal structure that looks clean on paper but isn't.
Redbud's portfolio now spans 44 companies - 61% first-time founders, 45% immigrants, 48% with Midwest roots. Every one of those investments runs through legal documentation that Lewis and his team have to get right. Not just once. At scale, repeatedly, at pre-seed speed.
BS + Master of Accountancy with a taxation emphasis. Before the law degree came a deep grounding in how money actually moves - tax code, not just contract language.
JD from one of the Midwest's storied law schools. The combination of tax fluency and legal training set the foundation for a practice that would bridge finance and law.
Licensed to practice law in Illinois - notably the state with the most aggressive biometric privacy statute in the nation (BIPA). A fitting first jurisdiction for a lawyer who would later write the guidebook on biometric data compliance.
Added Missouri to his licensure. Now dual-licensed and based in the Show-Me State, with a practice that increasingly spans both jurisdictions.
Joined one of St. Louis's established firms as a litigator focused on business litigation, cybersecurity, and consumer privacy. Published first piece in Missouri In-House Counsel on employment law changes.
Published a widely-read commentary in Missouri In-House Counsel warning Midwest companies about biometric data exposure under Illinois BIPA - before most corporate counsel had added it to their compliance checklist.
Moved in-house to Columbia, MO's multi-asset family office. Took on full responsibility for M&A, real estate, tax, employment matters, governance, fund management, and strategic investments across a diversified portfolio spanning steel, heavy equipment, and private market investments.
Added the GC role at Redbud VC - the pre-seed fund co-founded by the EquipmentShare founders. Now manages legal for both a family office and an active venture capital fund simultaneously, advising on every deal in a 44-company portfolio.
Structuring and closing mergers, acquisitions, and strategic investments across both The Premiere Group and Redbud VC's portfolio. Knows how a deal looks from the buy side, the sell side, and the investor side at the same time.
Building the legal architecture that lets a venture fund function - LP agreements, fund governance, compliance frameworks, and the documentation that underlies every pre-seed check Redbud writes.
With a Master's in Accountancy before the law degree, Lewis reads tax structures the way most lawyers read contracts. His taxation emphasis shapes how deals are built from the ground up.
Represented business clients in cybersecurity and consumer privacy matters including Illinois BIPA claims. Published author on biometric privacy compliance. Early and consistent voice on data privacy law in the Midwest.
From Illinois's pay equity and hiring restrictions (covered in his 2019 Missouri In-House Counsel piece) to managing employment matters for a family office with diverse business operations across multiple states.
Litigation background at Carmody MacDonald paired with in-house real estate experience at The Premiere Group - covering commercial real estate matters from dispute to deal.
Redbud VC isn't a Stanford-network fund with a Palo Alto address. It was built by Willy and Jabbok Schlacks - two brothers who built EquipmentShare into a $10 billion company in Columbia, Missouri, without elite connections or institutional backing. That origin story is also Redbud's investment thesis: the greatest driver of venture returns is the selection of founders who have overcome adversity.
That's an unusual thesis. And it demands an unusual legal approach. The founders Redbud backs are often first-timers - people building companies for the first time, navigating SAFEs and cap tables and employment agreements without the institutional knowledge that comes with experience. Lewis's role isn't just to protect Redbud. It's to support the ecosystem Redbud is building.
The Premiere Group side of his work adds another layer entirely. A family office that spans real estate, steel, heavy equipment, and private investments doesn't have a simple legal playbook. Lewis manages the full spectrum - from commercial lease negotiations to fund governance to employment disputes - across a multi-asset platform where the legal challenges change with every business unit.
Running legal for a VC fund and a family office simultaneously is like being the head of surgery for two different hospitals. You don't just treat the patient in front of you. You maintain the systems that keep everyone else safe too.
He does both. Quietly. In Columbia, Missouri - a city that has now produced two multi-billion dollar tech companies and one of the most operator-centric VC funds in the country.
Before Jordan Lewis was a lawyer, he was an accountant. Not an accountant who "also went to law school," but someone who actually completed a Master of Accountancy at the University of Missouri with an emphasis in taxation - the kind of degree that teaches you to follow money through entity structures, across state lines, through years of fiscal history.
That foundation is unusual in legal practice. Most attorneys who end up in venture capital come from securities law or M&A practices at large firms - people trained in the language of deals. Lewis speaks that language, but he also speaks tax. He understands what a fund structure looks like to the IRS, what a carried interest arrangement means for the partners' individual tax positions, how a deal structured one way versus another changes the after-tax returns for the LP. These are not trivial distinctions. In venture capital, they're often the difference between a good deal and a great one.
It's the kind of background that makes you hard to replace. A general counsel who can read both a term sheet and a 10-K without needing a translator is a different kind of asset than one who can do only the former.
Before he went in-house, Lewis was a litigator at Carmody MacDonald - a respected St. Louis firm that has handled complex business disputes for decades. Litigation teaches you something that transactional work doesn't: how deals go wrong. You sit across from the consequences of bad documentation, ambiguous governance terms, and overlooked compliance requirements. You see what happens when the contract the client signed two years ago turns out to say something different from what they thought it said.
That experience shapes how Lewis drafts. He's not just writing documents that close deals. He's writing documents that survive the deal going sideways - that protect the fund when a portfolio company struggles, that keep governance intact when founders disagree, that preserve LP interests through the long and sometimes turbulent life of a venture fund.
Businesses should provide notice to employees and customers before collecting, using, storing or disseminating biometric information - and develop breach response procedures before they need them.
- Jordan Lewis, writing on BIPA compliance, 2021In 2019 - the same year he was at Carmody MacDonald - Lewis published a piece in Missouri In-House Counsel about employment law changes affecting hiring practices and pay equity. Two years later, he published a comprehensive guide to biometric privacy law for Midwest businesses, walking through the patchwork of state statutes, the Illinois BIPA's enforcement teeth ($1,000 per negligent violation, $5,000 per intentional one), and what companies needed to do to avoid exposure.
At the time, most Missouri businesses were not thinking about biometric privacy law. BIPA litigation was picking up in Illinois, but the idea that a Missouri company might have exposure - through its Illinois operations, its remote employees, its technology vendors - hadn't yet penetrated the consciousness of most in-house counsel in the state.
Lewis was writing about it anyway. That pattern - identifying legal terrain before it becomes a crisis - is the same instinct that makes a good general counsel. You don't just react to problems. You map what's coming.
There's something worth noting about where Jordan Lewis does his work. Columbia, Missouri is a college town of about 125,000 people, home to the University of Missouri. It is not, by any conventional metric, a hub of venture capital or legal innovation. And yet: EquipmentShare was built here into a $10+ billion company. Redbud VC was launched here. The Premiere Group runs its multi-asset family office here.
Lewis is part of the growing infrastructure that makes places like Columbia viable - not just as places to start companies, but as places where those companies can access real legal, financial, and operational expertise without relocating to the coasts. For founders in Kansas City, St. Louis, Tulsa, or Indianapolis who take capital from Redbud, the fact that their fund's general counsel has deep experience in the exact legal complexity they're navigating is not a small thing.
The Midwest is building something. Jordan Lewis is helping make sure the paperwork holds it together.
A comprehensive guide for Midwest businesses on navigating the patchwork of biometric privacy statutes - from Illinois's BIPA (with its $1,000-$5,000 per-violation teeth) to federal proposals. Lewis recommended proactive consent frameworks, breach response protocols, and data retention policies years before most corporate counsel added BIPA to their compliance checklist.
Data PrivacyAn early guide to Illinois employment law changes affecting hiring practices, pay equity protections, and workplace policy requirements - written with practical recommendations for companies operating across state lines, particularly those with Illinois employees or operations subject to the state's expanding labor regulations.
Employment LawHe holds a Master of Accountancy with a tax emphasis before his law degree - making him one of the rare GCs who can read an IRC section and a term sheet with equal comfort.
He was licensed in Illinois first (2015) - the state with the most aggressive biometric privacy law in the country. A year later, Missouri. He's been straddling both jurisdictions ever since.
He wrote about biometric privacy law in 2021 - before most Missouri companies knew what BIPA stood for, and years before the wave of class action litigation made it front-page news.
His legal work at The Premiere Group spans at least six distinct practice areas - real estate, M&A, employment, tax, fund governance, and strategic investments - all within one organization.
Redbud VC's portfolio includes 61% first-time founders and 45% immigrant founders. Lewis's legal work helps protect a fund that specifically seeks out people the establishment overlooked.
He operates out of Columbia, Missouri - the same city where EquipmentShare built a $10B+ company and where Redbud VC is quietly building the Midwest's most founder-centric venture ecosystem.