A straight answer, by stage. Most early companies do not need ongoing legal counsel, and the ones that do usually know why.
A co-founder agreement if you have a partner, even a one-page one covering equity split, roles and what happens if someone leaves. Beyond that, understanding which entity structure will make sense before you start earning. Most other legal spend at this stage is premature.
A single conversation, or one small piece of drafting. There is nothing here that needs a lawyer on retainer, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Entity formation in the right state and structure, an operating agreement or bylaws, your first customer agreement template, contractor agreements, and a privacy policy if you are collecting data.
Discrete, scoped projects. You come with a defined need, it gets done, and that is the end of the engagement until the next one. This is how most early companies should buy legal work.
Offer letters, worker classification done correctly, IP assignment from everyone who touches the product, and written policies on the issues that actually come up. Employment exposure is where early companies get hurt.
Still project work for most companies. If legal questions have started arriving weekly rather than quarterly, an ongoing arrangement starts to make more sense than repeated one-off engagements.
Recurring contract volume, customer and vendor negotiations, compliance obligations that are now someone's actual job, hiring at pace, and fundraising conversations that require diligence.
A Fractional General Counsel retainer. At this point the cost of re-explaining your business to hourly counsel every time exceeds the cost of having someone who already knows it.
Either way, the door is the same. Raphael takes small scoped projects for early companies as readily as ongoing retainers, and the initial conversation is free. If the honest answer is that you do not need a lawyer yet, you will hear that — it is cheaper for everyone than an engagement that should not have started.