Venture Capital Meets Legal Tech: A Conversation with Yousuf Khan of Ridge Ventures

What happens when a venture capitalist with CIO experience meets the evolving world of legal technology? Yousuf Khan, Partner at Ridge Ventures (https://ridge.vc), brings a refreshing perspective on what makes legal tech startups truly investable in today's market.
 
Our conversation reveals why Ridge Ventures takes the unusual step of including customer introduction targets directly in their term sheets, creating genuine accountability between investors and founders. Drawing from his experience as a former CIO who worked closely with legal departments, Yousuf explains how he developed empathy for legal professionals' technology challenges and access to a valuable network of decision-makers.
 
We explore the unique advantage legal tech founders have when they come from the legal profession. As Yousuf puts it, "Being able to articulate that pain point, being able to talk about the domain, is how you build a connection with your customers." This authentic understanding creates an immediate credibility that resonates with customers and investors.
 
We next examine how AI is reshaping the legal technology landscape. Beyond productivity gains, AI promises substantive improvements in legal outcomes, potentially creating a future where lawyers who don't adopt certain technologies face ethical and competitive disadvantages. As Yousuf memorably quips, "The jury's still out," but market expectations are rapidly shifting.
 
Yousuf offers practical wisdom for founders seeking investment: understand your specific market segments, demonstrate how your product will evolve over time, and focus relentlessly on customer success. "The only mode a legal tech founder needs to be in is customer mode," he emphasizes, cutting through trendy debates about founder versus manager mindsets.
 
Join us for this insightful conversation about building successful legal tech companies in a time of unprecedented technological change and opportunity. Whether you're a founder, investor, or legal professional curious about innovation, you'll gain valuable perspective on where this dynamic industry is heading.

Transcript

Introduction to Yusuf Khan and Ridge Ventures

Speaker 1 0:10

Hello everyone. This is Charlie Uniman, your podcast host at the LegalTech Startup Focus podcast. Welcome. We have a really wonderful guest today, a sort of guest I am particularly interested in and happy to have join a podcast devoted to legal tech startups. In this case, today, it is an investor, professional investor. His name is Yusuf Khan. I had the pleasure of meeting him in December last year at the Legal Tech Fund Summit and he was kind enough to agree to be a guest on the podcast here. So welcome, yusuf.

Speaker 2 0:51

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. It was great to have met you at the LegalTech Conference, and you've really been a central part of the ecosystem, and so I'm really, really honored and really appreciate you making the time and inviting me here.

Speaker 1 1:04

Well, kind of you to say that A pleasure is all mine and that of our listeners. So now that we have an investor here, it's about time. We have had an opportunity to learn about what some VC firms are doing generally and in legal tech in particular, and what Yusuf is doing generally and in legal tech in particular, and what Yusuf is doing. So give us a bit of a pre-see on Ridge Ventures and your role there. And you're based out in San Fran, is that right?

Speaker 2 1:35

That's correct. Yeah, so Ridge Ventures has been around for over a decade. We have raised a number of different funds every few years. Our latest fund is Fund 5, which we raised in 2022, which is $180 million fund.

Speaker 2 1:50

Our focus as a team of 10 people is really centering on finding the best B2B and enterprise software companies in the industry. We typically invest at the seed and series A stages, typically doing check sizes of two to six million dollars. Our objective is to be able to team up and partner with founding teams and helping them take their business to market. We do that by being very thoughtful about being a thoughtful board members and listening more than we speak and listening more than we speak. Second, we are very richly focused in being able to provide data and our lessons learned in being investors in companies like Fastly and Braze, both of which went public, and having stakes in companies like MaintainX that have become unicorns, and to be able to provide that to help the next generation of companies navigate how they go to market.

Speaker 2 2:46

And we're unique in one case is that we are the only VC firm that will hold ourselves accountable by putting in a target of customer introductions as a shared goal in our term sheets and a lot of founders like that because of the network that we have amongst CXOs, ranging from general counsels and CIOs and other companies, so super excited about the industry. We continue to be very excited about B2B software, where we don't do anything else. We just know that businesses are being transformed and industries are being transformed by software and, of course, now AI. We think that's a huge opportunity, both for investing in transformative products and building great companies along the way.

How VCs Add Value Beyond Funding

Speaker 1 3:32

Yeah, very well done. Super bird's eye view of Ridge. You know, when I was practicing law and representing VCs, sometimes in startups there was always this question. Startups would often ask what does it really mean for a VC to add value beyond the dollars and cents value that comes with handing over a check? And often it was said with sort of a wink and a nod. But there are and I've experienced it on both sides of the table there are VCs that do more than write a check and that is so valuable if you're a startup.

Speaker 1 4:19

Now, if you're a lifestyle business, you're probably not in legal tech and you're not going to look to raise money. But if you want to grow at some point in your arc, you're probably not in legal tech and you're not going to look to raise money. But if you want to grow at some point in your arc, you're going to have to have outside funds come in. And that's where someone such as Yusuf is important. But more importantly, even than the check, or just as importantly I should say check pretty damn important is the sort of thing that Yusuf had mentioned, for example, making customer introductions. Do you know how valuable that is? How did that become one of Ridge's calling cards and even a term sheet provision.

Speaker 2 4:55

Yeah, so we decided a few things. One is, when you rigorously focus in specific areas, you are part of the community of that area, right, and so for us, whilst enterprise software is very sizable, we've had a long history of building, you know, thoughtful relationships with CXOs, and that started with CMO and CIO and then kind of extended beyond that in other roles and other functions. I have also a unique background in. You know, I think there's probably no more than maybe 20 people in venture capital who come from a CIO or a CISO background, like I do, and so, as a result, I came from that community of folks and therefore, when I have a conversation with a CIO or a CISO, or in some cases even a CMO or CFO a sizable network I've been in the operating seat, I know the problems that they've experienced with specific companies, how they manage their teams, and that just allowed us to be able to build a very substantial network. We'd like to think that likability is kind of important in this industry, so it's kind of important to be able to not build transactional relationships. Sometimes it's about being able to share what you see. So our value add to the CXO communities is as much as ability to help accelerate a decision or be a thought partner when, know, when, a CMO or a CIO reaches out and says well, you know, I've been given this initiative and I'm thinking about these areas. What do you hear? What do you see? We're able to basically say look, here are the five companies, here's what we've heard. Here are the companies that are doing. Well, we've invested in one company Actually, we don't have any investments, but we'd connect you up with those and that allows them. They benefit from that. They would love to make sure they associate with us and you know, we do that with a sense of thoughtfulness, a little bit of humor and making sure that we host the right events which we think are well regarded and have a good draw. And then the other piece, in terms of being able to put that as part of our strategy. We just thought that that would be a very clear way for us to hold ourselves accountable, demonstrate value add and put pen to paper. And it's definitely resonated well with the founder community.

Speaker 2 7:16

If you are an early stage company, you would like to speak to early stage. You want an early stage customers. You want CIOs and CXOs who are willing to take the risk of being an early customer of your product. I of course have that community because I myself was in those shoes. I was an early customer of companies like Zoom, datadog and Slack, a lot of these. I was the first customer of companies like Moveworks and Simpler and others, and so, you know, I'd like to think that a number of my CXO colleagues and peers reached out to me and say, well, you know, that seems really interesting and you know, you must have got a good price or you clearly helped shape the product and I want to be able to do that. And so we've had a bit of a following from that standpoint as well, and so that's helped us build a community.

Speaker 2 8:03

So that's how it all kind of came about and how we've been able to put that. I mean, I think it's important to reiterate it's a shared goal. It's not like we're saying, well, by the way, we're easy to do it. We want to make sure that that's a way for us to be able to work collectively together. Outside of just writing a check, outside of just attending board meetings, is to be able to say okay. How of just attending board meetings is to be able to say okay, how do we collectively have a goal that we're able to attach to each other and that we can collectively go after, and so that's-.

Speaker 1 8:30

Yeah, your incentives are properly aligned with the startup, that's for sure when it comes to making introductions, can result in go-to-market success for the startup.

Speaker 1 8:42

And the fact that, as you described it, it's not just a transactional thing.

Speaker 1 8:46

It's the understanding on the part of a VC such as you, who has been in the industry of providing funds to startups and done so over a number of years, where, because of a reputation that you build with humor, with a certain amount of common sense and personality, that the CSOs and the CXOs of various sorts come to trust you.

Legal Tech Investment Focus Areas

Speaker 1 9:11

And as a startup, you don't have that trust yet, unless you've been a successful startup leader and have had several good exits. And because you don't have that, this is where you can look to someone and rely on the trust reservoir that they've accumulated over the years, and that's exactly so. When startup leaders, you hear of VCs adding value, don't do an eye roll. It actually does happen and it's not just honored in the breach, it's actually honored, and that's, I think Yusuf and Ridge Venturesures here describing what they do are an excellent example of that. When it comes to legal tech investing, do you at Ridge, or you yourself, have any particular subsegment of legal tech that you're particularly interested in and find of some upside potential that you'd like to exploit.

Speaker 2 10:08

Yeah, first of all, we think it's a very exciting industry. I'll give you a backdrop to it. I was a CIO of several companies and in each of those roles, I'd like to think that the general counsels and the legal teams became my friends, because I actually asked them what they needed and understood that their system needs were not really addressed by the market. Number one and number two, that they were not system implementers with respect, they are legal professionals and so I partnered very well with them. I was an early customer of several products, or I helped be able to identify the needs very well. That started my journey in legal tech, because it was very clear to me that there was a huge opportunity from an innovation standpoint. So way before I became an investor, and then, when I became an investor, it was clear that I'd start to see more companies and the space really hotting up, and I think that accelerated with AI coming into the scene in November 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, and so that really accelerated our focus. Accelerated our focus. We were investors in a company called Streamline, which is founded by Cathy Zhu, who was a former general counsel at companies like Medallia and DoorDash. I'd heard about her through mutual friends and she was trying to solve part of the legal intake problem at her roles and we, you know, connected and clearly we're finishing, finishing each other's sentences and decide to become an investor in that company.

Speaker 2 11:50

We look at a couple of areas, so number one is the area. This, the legal tech scene, is very, very interesting and exciting for us. We think the reason for that at the at the very high level, charlie is that as the AI models and the foundational models get smarter and they are doing so at a rapid pace it means they're doing that intelligence processing against data sets which are not growing at exponential rates. By that I mean you're not having 50 new property laws being added into the state in a particular state. Your legal precedents and cases are being added, but that's being done in a way that in a single data store. That could be research, and so therefore, if the models get smarter and the data is not growing in that expansion space, the theory is that you will have less hallucinations and a higher quality result. Number one, second, is that so that's in legal research.

Speaker 2 12:44

In other areas, we just think that actually, general counsels and legal operations teams in companies, whether they be enterprise tech companies or Fortune 500, their needs are badly. They're not being met, and so, therefore, we think an opportunity is that they will discover budgets. They will create budgets to be able to make their functions much more efficient using technology. They are definitely hiring people who are much more attuned to using AI tools and technology and solutions, and so, therefore, find the right solutions that meet those needs would be would be hugely beneficial.

Speaker 2 13:22

We think different areas, whether it's been personal injury law firms that work on contingency basis. We think about general counsel and legal ops teams, for example. We think that those are very interesting areas. And then we think about some of the subset with adjacent so and you think about the impact of legal in a company, whether it's partnering up with the finance team on, say, managing, you know, revenue recognition or contract management, and partnering up with procurement. We think these are very interesting areas. They could be accelerated in the next generation of companies. So pretty wide, but starting to focus, as we've started to speak to smart people like yourself and others who have been able to give us insight, and, of course, a large part of this business, especially in the investment business, is really being able to constantly calibrate, speak to the right. People meet with tons of founders, meet with general counsels, meet with practitioners and understand what their needs are and start to come up with a thesis and identify the companies that fit that thesis.

Speaker 1 14:21

Yeah, years ago.

Speaker 1 14:23

I started the community seven years ago and it's amazing to me and it's a good thing that while seven years ago the legal tech startup leaders with whom I spoke were principally focused on the law firm side and not because I'm surprisingly bright, it was just that I had worked in the law I knew that the other side of the ledger involved in-house legal departments and they were getting less attention.

Speaker 1 14:50

Now they're getting more, but that is still early days, I think, for bringing in technology. That will be, I think, just as warmly, if not more warmly, welcomed by this group of people known as legal ops types at enterprise legal departments. Warmly, if not more warmly, welcomed by this group of people known as legal ops types at enterprise legal departments. So I was happy you mentioned that. I think that startups, who traditionally have leaders who have come out of law firms, should not fail to direct their attention to building for the enterprise, because they're going to have budgets for it and they're going to have people that are not as distant from technology, shall we say, as many private practice lawyers are. So I'm glad to see you're in that particular sub area.

Speaker 2 15:39

One of the things to add Charlie, you're absolutely right is that I think it's important to point out the industries that do well in software are where customers are excited about the value as well as the product offering, and there's a real wow factor when it comes to AI. The promise of AI in enterprise is really about productivity uplift, which is why you see the high level of usage of ChatGPT and other solutions which are able to accelerate workflow, and that's great for technical folks who can, you know, say, hey, I can code faster or I can do a little bit more automation in particular processes. But it really is a huge exciting opportunity for non-technical functions when they are, when they ops teams or you think about general counsels or patent functions being able to summarize legal documents, being able to accelerate the workflow in response of it, being able to complete information, being able to generate documents, and you kind of you know, hear the emotion in their voice, but even you can kind of sense my excitement around it. That must mean something, and so it basically means that there's an appetite, and the appetite comes from the fact that somebody says I can work faster, and I think everybody wants to be able to work faster and work better and as a result of that, they're going to talk to companies that hold that promise.

Speaker 2 17:11

Now the question really comes down to is it may well be a great product. Does it necessarily mean it's a good business? Are people willing to pay $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 a year? Do they see that value? And then the other piece from the investment standpoint really comes down to is can we see this as a long-term company that we want to invest in and put several million dollars in? So that's kind of how the thesis builds up. But at the high level, one of the things we see is if there's excitement about a space, which is what I've seen in legal tech, especially with the promise of AI, we think there's a huge opportunity there.

Speaker 1 17:43

Yeah, and I advise the people who are legal tech startup leaders in love with the problem and even getting some positive feedback, don't forget the importance of scale here as you decide how to proceed with your venture.

The Future of Legal Tech in 2024

Speaker 1 17:59

And there I mean it was a famous jobs you cited Steve Jobs before, if I recall His famous jobs point what you're building is a feature, not a business. Make sure that at the outset of your journey and looking someday to speak to someone like Yusuf and raise some money, that what you have in hand is not something that can be considered just a feature, albeit an important feature, but not necessarily have the legs for becoming a business. Now, that's not to say that at the outset of your venture, or I should say your journey in legal tech startup land, you might not want to start small, but have a vision that you can communicate adequately and plausibly to show that this is step one in an arc that will more than just bolt on but properly integrate a lot of other features that in turn mean bigger benefits to customers. That in turn mean, you know, more lasting runway for you the startup and a bigger market to exploit.

Speaker 2 19:11

One of the things, charlie, on that sorry Dharam you brought in Steve Jobs, who's been, of course, a hero and an idol of so many people in this industry and I think part of I'll give my own Steve Jobs quote in connection to this. One of the opportunities here is that the legal tech companies, in terms of their founder connection, comes from a level of domain experience, and I think that is I wouldn't say it's completely unique, but it does stand out where the best kind of legal tech companies, at least in my viewpoint, have a degree of depth of experience of understanding the problem area in a way that most people do not. You probably have had to go to law school to be able to do it. You probably worked at a law firm, you worked in particular areas and now you're building a technology product around it. So that requires quite a bit of expertise. It requires, of course, a lot of courage. You know the founder journey is long and hard and you need to basically partner up with, you know, a technical co-founder to be able to help build a product, and I think there's no shortage of stories out there.

Speaker 2 20:09

But I think, in relation to that, I think that the experience that they have is some of the things that Steve Jobs talked about when they were early on, you know, post the launch of both the iPod and the iPhone. You know he was asked a question about how they think about the desktop market overall and kind of where Apple sits, and I remember him saying something you know along the lines of you know we take a great amount of pride in the work that we do, in the product that we build. We want to build products that we like and we are passionate about, but also ones that we want our friends and family to use right. We want to be able to stand by that and recommend it and we're not going to ship junk is the exact quote that he talked about, and I thought that was very, very important to point out, because you know, when you come from a domain expertise, when you run the experience of either being a transaction lawyer or a personal injury lawyer, or a legal ops person or general counsel, and you are either the customer or, in most cases, the founder of a product, my biggest advice to founders is be able to you are part of the story.

Speaker 2 21:19

Being able to articulate that pain point, being able to talk about the domain, is how you build a connection with your customers. It's how you build a connection and demonstrate your leadership, as well as your vision, with investors. You know, a lot of investors don't come from an operating background. They haven't worked in law firm. Hell, a lot of investors haven't worked, haven't been a CIO I mentioned. I'm probably one of 20 in the industry and so, as a result of that, it's not obvious to them. And I think the biggest advice I would give is it's very important and it's a unique opportunity, because a majority of legal tech startups have a founder who comes from the legal field, has qualified, has had experience, and he or she should really be able to articulate that and bring that to the table.

Speaker 1 22:04

Yeah, it is a unique advantage, but you've got to get the story across and you've got to hone that story. It's not a matter of writing it down in legalese. It's a matter of convincing another human being, in plain English, that you're scratching your own itch. That's a painful itch, you know how to scratch it and you're bringing to that backscratching device that you're building something that, in your experience and with your vision as to how law has been practiced and should be practiced, is new to the game. And take advantage, exploit your experience, the fact that you're familiar with the dog food that's been eaten. You're coming up with a better dog food, but explain it. Well, I want to turn.

Speaker 1 22:50

You know and Yusuf and I had sort of talked about this very, very briefly before I hit the record button we're not very far into 2025. 2024 was an interesting year, a little bit of a problematical one, as was 2023 for, you know, the startup market generally and VCs somewhat themselves, because of the changes in the macro economy. But we're off to a roaring start. I'm trying to remember the posts that I put up in even the last 10 days when it comes to fundraising, numbers that when I and my audience knows I'm repeating myself, numbers that when I started this community, let alone when I retired from the practice of law and tried my own hand at a startup, numbers that I never thought would be attained by legal tech startups from the professional investing community. Where do you see 2025 going from here? Can we keep up the pace? Is it a silly question to ask?

Speaker 2 23:50

No, I think I would say we can definitely keep up the pace and I think I remain very optimistic about that. And the reason is, I think, something like the legal tech space, I think, is still early days. I think the market continues to grow and I think where the market grows is, you know, the firms are, you know they haven't been the most active buyers of technology small, medium or large law firms. But I think the promise of technology is substantial as transformative. It is not incremental. Right, when you think about traditional technology buyers, whether the CIOs or CTOs, in some cases, you know when you had a new product released on one of the large cloud platforms or one of the large software companies, you know you'd say, well, that's good, that's great. And sense of urgency is something that sometimes was there. Most times it was not. And in this case I think it's different because I think the world is really waking up, especially the legal community is waking up to the promise of technology.

Speaker 2 24:53

There are no shortage of naysayers, by the way, just to be crystal clear, there's lots of use cases that it probably doesn't apply to. There's a number of small law firms and medium law firms who are like look, it probably is beneficial. It may help in some cases, but, no, it probably isn't as big a deal. That's OK as well. Somewhere down the line there'll be a technology that does solve a problem for them. So there's going to be positives and there's going to be negatives there. But I do think in the longer run of things, we're probably going to expect a number of law firms who are going to say, well, wait a second, and a number of GCs and members of the legal community are going to wake up and say, well, wait a second. There's a huge productivity uplift from a lot of my peers. What am I not doing that I should basically be doing?

Speaker 2 25:38

Secondly, I think a number of the cycle times for companies and products that are in the market are starting to mature. You've got referenceability in terms of customers. You've fixed a number of bug fixes. You've improved the level of integrations. You have improved the level of data security. You've built and evolved your product in providing more analytics. You've probably raised more capital. You've become a bigger company. You're much more polished in marketing and so, as a result of that, it becomes an easier sell, and I think that part of that is the value that they're able to get, and I see that as the longer view again and I see that as the longer view.

Speaker 1 26:18

Yeah, I dare say that while there are, you know, use cases that will fall by the wayside, never mature, and there are naysayers still, and the law is a cautious profession for good reason A lot can be at stake and you know they owe allegiances not only to their clients but to the justice system generally. And if they were hard charging, risk taking, work fast and break thing types, they wouldn't be lawyers. That said, we're going to come to a day soon, I believe, where if you, as a practicing lawyer, or your firm doesn't have a particular technology tool, your client may not call you on that, but you will see that the competition that does exploit that tool is going to write a better brief, negotiate a better contract, predict the outcome of a litigation and a settlement discussion and a negotiation better than you, and you're going to say well, you know, I'm not getting the results that my competition is getting in the absence of this tool. I better adopt it.

Speaker 1 27:32

The other thing I think, too, will happen is that if you're not using certain tools, you're not serving your client as well as you can when it comes, say, to predicting the outcome of litigation or understanding what a judge is likely to do in a particular circumstance. There's tools out there to help you do that, and if you're not serving your client fully and adequately, you're not upholding the ethical standards that are required of you, so let alone the exposure to malpractice liability. We're not quite there yet, where people are quivering in the corner saying if I don't adopt this technology, I'm going to be sued for malpractice. But I think we're getting close to that, and I hate to sound as hard-nosed about it, but I think we're getting close to that, and I hate to sound as hard nosed about it, but I think we're getting there.

Speaker 2 28:16

Well, one thing I want to say, charlie, and I can only say this on on on this, on this podcast, the jury's still out. Well said, yeah. I think it's appropriate for that. I think you've hit on a really big point here and I think that's really about the market expectation right? So if we think about companies, you know, do we want an accelerated process of data and at least decisions and review of evidence in our court system? I would like to think so. Yes, I think technology will aid that process. I'm not saying it's perfect, because that's not how the system is built, but can we be able to at least accelerate that and I think you know be able to provide that? I think that's not how the system is built, but can we be able to at least accelerate that, and I think you know be able to provide that? I think that's 100%. I believe that would be a benefit. I'm saying that I think the customer experience even if you're a corporation and you are working with a law firm or you've got internal people like, for example, salespeople, who want to look at, you know, msas or contract reviews they have an expectation. They're human beings who use modern technology and products. They have a high-quality consumer experience. And then they come into work and they're told hey, by the way, you've got to do this manually, et cetera.

Speaker 2 29:27

Somewhere down the line there's going to be a level of frustration, there's a level of lack of accountability. This is how technology consumer technology came into the workplace, because people were using it, like the iPhone. I was a CIO of several companies when the iPhone got launched and it was literally the C-suite. We used to come up and be like why are we not having this? And they'd accuse me well, it's not enterprise grade and all the other stuff. The reality is it very much was. And grid and all the other stuff. The reality is it very much was. And we didn't have the tools. It wasn't built for that. And you'd have the demands like well, we still have to use BlackBerry.

Speaker 2 30:03

Well, no, that didn't work out very well, and so I think what that lesson taught us was that you've got to listen to the market. Somewhere down the line. A client doesn't want to basically having to come to the office and drive and be able to do that. They want to be able to provide testimony or provide material in a digital way which is safe and secure. Somewhere down the line. The processing of data should not take weeks and weeks on end. It should be taking a few days for at least some degree of a response to come into place, right? I mean, so that's kind of where I think there's a bit of a drive, and I think you framed it really well. I think you framed it really well. I think this is what the market expects and would want to see happen over the course of several years.

Keys to Success for Legal Tech Startups

Speaker 1 30:42

Final point on this, for me at least, whether your competition is besting you because of the several technology applications that they're using, or you're not serving your client adequately on a substantive because you're not familiar with predictions and data and interpretations of that data that can make you a better advisor when advising your client. Just think of the time to value issue. Your client wants to get the deal done. You want to get the matter built. Your client wants to get the deal done. You want to get the matter bill, and if you can use technology to value both for your client and for yourself, it's a win-win. So I'm always on the lookout for technologies and legal tech that can shorten the time to value.

Speaker 1 31:27

I agree with you, yusuf. I think we've got a headwind that has lessened over the years and I think we've got a tailwind that's strengthened and I think we're going to see a good year coming from the finance and technology gods that have a say over how legal tech develops and what it can market. As we look to more general matters, you mentioned the importance of exploiting a legal tech startup helmed by a former lawyer, exploiting that lawyer's experience and being able to tell the story that shows how that experience, figures into knowledge of the market and pain points out there. What other drivers of success or drivers of lack of success to be avoided that you might discuss as we round out the corner here. Turn the corner towards the end of the podcast that legal tech startup leadership bear in mind when, at the C stage or Series A, they come to the point where they consider they need some money and they're going to go outside to investors like you.

Speaker 2 32:43

Yeah, I think the biggest piece really is being able to understand the market and navigate that right. There's being able to assess who is a likely buyer, how much they're willing to pay for, and so that's one aspect of mapping out the market that you want to be able to go after, because you know qualification of customers. You can't just simply say, well, there's 50,000 law firms out there and I'm going to, basically, you know, all I just need is X. Well, there's a whole bunch that don't want to buy stuff. It's just they don't have the budget, they don't have the will, they don't have the people. You know they're, they're, you know they're like no, this is not what we're going to do.

Speaker 2 33:22

So being able to identify what, what the market looks like, where you can be successful, I think that's important Number one. Number two is being able to demonstrate how you build a company in the longer term in terms of the product evolving. There's a lot of products out there. You know, with respect, is their single unit, you know their, they reference point, products which don't evolve, they, they don't come across with innovation and result, will eventually get displaced and in some cases, that's going to be lack of renewal right They've just they're like get it and others is going to be, a competitor is going to come along and it's going to really just like run circles around them.

Speaker 2 34:01

So I think that's important to be able to think about it. So, if you're a legal tech founder, think about how you build a company over the course of the longer term, how you continue to serve your customers, be it law firms or general counsels or legal ops teams, or even the consumers. Right, I mean, there's no shortage of companies. I want to make sure I give credit to a number of the legal tech startups who are trying to make the access to the justice system a lot better, a lot faster.

Speaker 1 34:27

Sure Think about retail law.

Speaker 2 34:29

Yeah, think about the ability for somebody to some an individual or a company to basically pay 10,000 this year, 20,000 and ask yourself, as a founder, why would they do that? What am I providing to them that they're willing to be able to provide that? What value am I adding that they're willing to place that place apart? And I think the last thing is which I think everyone forgetss and this is applies to enterprise software, charlie, as it applies to legal tech is how do you make customers really, really successful? I mean, I put out the blog, I put out a blog post, uh, you know, several months ago, where there's this big debate about founder mode and manager mode, and god, knows what else and I I basically I just thought that was complete distraction.

Speaker 2 35:10

I think the only mode that a legal tech founder needs to be in is customer mode, and that means that you have to ultimately understand how you make your customers really, really successful. Number one how do you be able to make sure that you educate them so they buy your product and say, wow, my career is better as a result of this because I'm seen as a trailblazer, but my firm is better and I'm the one who championed this product? And number three is how do you make sure that you'll continue to basically add value, and that requires effort. It's not just about well, I just need to get a bunch of ad bats, host a bunch of events and hope somebody basically buys. It's how you think about the longer term and that's how you build, in my viewpoint, a startup in an industry which is only going to grow, which is going to be transformed by technology, specifically with AI at the infrastructure aspect of it. And number three where you have domain expertise as a founder who understands the customer problem, those things are very well said, very good advice.

Closing Thoughts and Ecosystem Building

Speaker 1 36:02

Yusuf, I can't thank you enough for joining me on the podcast and offering the insights you have made available, and we had a chance to meet in December and under the then warm and sunny skies of the Miami area. When you get out here my way in New York, if I get out in SF land, let's get together again. I say to all my podcast guests and have a drink and explore legal tech some more, because, as you put it and when compared to other industries, this is early innings and there's fun to be had, people to meet and enjoy and money to be made. So thank you for contributing to that and helping our startup leaders especially.

Speaker 2 36:56

Thank you, charlie. Thank you for having me. It's important for all of the listeners out there. It's important to understand that ecosystems are built with many, many players, and part of that are community builders and voices. Charlie, you played a phenomenal part in that. I'm very grateful for that. A number of the legal tech community is very grateful and I'm looking forward to collaborating with you in some way, shape or form. Make mine a Diet Coke on ice with lemon, but whatever you choose, I'm happy to serve it and I look forward to staying in touch and talking with you in the future.

Speaker 1 37:26

Great Thanks. Very much, yusuf. Thank you for listening to the LegalTech Startup Focus podcast. If you're interested in LegalTech startups and enjoyed this podcast, please consider joining the free LegalTech Startup Focus community by going to wwwlegaltechstartupfocuscom and signing up. Again thanks.