We headed to Silicon Valley to chat with SimpleLegal founder Nathan Wenzel in Episode 26. Nathan has a great legal tech start-up story–from idea to acquisition.

SimpleLegal provides legal operations software to help corporate legal teams run their departments, manage their legal operations and monitor finances. (This type of software is sometimes referred to as ELM software or “enterprise legal management” software.)

The early days of SimpleLegal were spent at Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s highly respected start-up accelerator. The company was one of the first legal tech companies YC accepted. After completing the program, Nathan and his team raised seed round funding and then a $10 million Series A round to grow the company.

Fast forward to 2019 and Onit came knocking. Onit is another company providing enterprise software for in-house legal departments and legal ops teams. Onit acquired SimpleLegal in May, 2019.

Nathan talks about his legal tech journey and what it was like to raise money when investors were not as familiar with legal technology companies.

Learn more about SimpleLegal, and be sure to check out their great blog covering legal ops and in-house legal topics. The company also has a great legal ops resource center too.

Things We Talk About in This Episode

Tech Crunch
Paul Graham’s Essays
SAFE (simple agreement for future equity)
Convertible debt
4 Lessons Learned While Raising $10M: Getting an Enterprise Software Company Funded (Article by Nathan)

Episode Credits

Editing and Production: Grant Blackstock

Theme Music: Home Base (Instrumental Version) by TA2MI