Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Chetan Puttagunta, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: The level of engagement and buy-in to the company mission was truly unique. I think the company has done a great job with this idea of building for the company. I really do think building an AI company is a real test in ego. You literally can’t have an ego because you have to have this idea that AI is just going to do this. [00:00:00] S0: AI is going to be better than us at everything at some point. [00:00:00] S2: It’s just going to do this. The foundation model will do this capability. I’m puzzling through this and it’s really hard, and it’s an amazing feature. We have these high bars of quality and polish. So we’re going to ship fast, work really hard, build this amazing feature… and it’s going to disappear within twelve weeks. That requires an extreme amount of buy-in and an extreme amount of humility, that we’re just riding this massive wave and we don’t know where it’s taking us, but every day we solve today’s problems. We don’t worry about tomorrow because it’s a different world. There’s a different type of energy, buy-in, and cadence that comes with that culture. It’s really interesting. The disadvantage of Stockholm has now become Legora’s advantage of being in Stockholm. Their talent population that they get to hire from is not just in Stockholm. It’s all over Europe and now it’s all over the world. Anybody that has that attitude is welcome to come join in Stockholm.
· Chetan Puttagunta, Max Junestrand, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: It’s just going to do this. The foundation model will do this capability. I’m puzzling through this and it’s really hard, and it’s an amazing feature. We have these high bars of quality and polish. So we’re going to ship fast, work really hard, build this amazing feature… and it’s going to disappear within twelve weeks. That requires an extreme amount of buy-in and an extreme amount of humility, that we’re just riding this massive wave and we don’t know where it’s taking us, but every day we solve today’s problems. We don’t worry about tomorrow because it’s a different world. There’s a different type of energy, buy-in, and cadence that comes with that culture. It’s really interesting. The disadvantage of Stockholm has now become Legora’s advantage of being in Stockholm. Their talent population that they get to hire from is not just in Stockholm. It’s all over Europe and now it’s all over the world. Anybody that has that attitude is welcome to come join in Stockholm. [00:00:00] S1: Our competition has remote days, three days in office, everybody leaves at six. From very early on… We serve dinner at eight, every day. A lot of people in our region are sort of tired of all these big American winners. We know that we have the talent and the grit and the prerequisites to build a generational company. Yeah, we had to go to the US to raise money because we want to work with the best VCs in the world. But there is a level of, we can also do it. We have Spotify just down the street. [00:00:00] S0: How are you going to get this level of fervor in the US?
· Jack Altman, Max Junestrand, Chetan Puttagunta
[00:00:00] S0: How are you going to get this level of fervor in the US? [00:00:00] S1: I think we have. I think we have a very unique culture in our New York office. [00:00:00] S0: Is it different? [00:00:00] S1: Very different. Well, it’s not different from Stockholm. We seeded it with the culture carriers from Sweden who came to New York, and I spent— [00:00:00] S2: I think tactically this was a really cool thing they did. You should talk about how you make everybody interview in Stockholm and then they have to onboard in Stockholm. [00:00:00] S0: Oh wow. So you live in New York, you’re going to join the New York office, and you’re going to Stockholm? [00:00:00] S1: Onboarding in Stockholm. People who join in Sydney have to go on a 24-hour flight to onboard in Stockholm. [00:00:00] S2: You can’t onboard anywhere else but Stockholm. When they first opened the first international office, New York, and actually London too, people that were based in Stockholm moved to set a cadence. It’s all going to be the same as Stockholm. [00:00:00] S1: The Germans who joined Legora have to move to Stockholm and work there for a year, and then they can move back to open the German office. You have to get it right.
· Max Junestrand, Chetan Puttagunta, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S1: The Germans who joined Legora have to move to Stockholm and work there for a year, and then they can move back to open the German office. You have to get it right. [00:00:00] S2: It’s a fascinating thing. I’ve been part of many companies that have many offices, and every office tends to take its own character. I remember the founders of Legora saying, “We want every office to feel the same,” which was itself a different way of thinking. Every time Max has had me visit the company, I visit during dinner time, which is 8:00 PM. That’s when they have guests, 8:00 PM. That’s been the case in every office. That’s another thing that happened at this company. It’s interesting to me that it continues to scale. You can continue to onboard in Stockholm because every one of the 400 people that joined before you onboarded in Stockholm. So you should too. [00:00:00] S1: The only reason we have that rule was because I did an internship at McKinsey and we’d have dinner at eight. So I was like, I guess that’s how you do this. [00:00:00] S0: Doing the US office in New York, obviously it’s not some outsider city. But from a tech perspective, there’s a lot of people in New York who want to work at a great tech company. There’s obviously been more there than in Stockholm, but it’s still different from San Francisco. I think you could probably bring some of that cultural thing there as a result. [00:00:00] S1: Now we just opened in Houston and we’re opening in Chicago, all the big legal hubs. Is this correct? Did you do a reference with Daniel Ek? [00:00:00] S2: Yes.
· Chetan Puttagunta, Max Junestrand, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: Yes. [00:00:00] S1: I think I heard this from you. You asked him about the culture at Legora and I think he said something like, “They’re pretty intense.” We were very upfront with that, even in interviews. Not intense to the point where it’s not fun, but being number two in this space is not an outcome worth fighting for. Then we might as well go do something else. We’re only going to play here to win. [00:00:00] S0: You think number one and number two will just be vastly different outcomes? [00:00:00] S1: Oh yeah, completely. It doesn’t actually matter if that’s the case or not— [00:00:00] S0: It gives you the right mindset. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. I think everybody’s dialed into that. I remember doing this interview in Swedish and there’s a saying: blodsmak. You taste the blood because you’ve worked so hard. I basically told her in Swedish that, “Yeah, sometimes I wake up and…” It’s a Swedish thing. I’m so tired… Then she publishes the article in English and the saying doesn’t make any sense in English. [00:00:00] S0: “Max is bloodthirsty.” [00:00:00] S1: So it’s like, “At Legora we wake up with a metallic taste of blood in our mouths.” People in the company go, “Holy shit, is Max a vampire or does he just floss badly?” [00:00:00] S0: How do you feel about that now? [00:00:00] S1: Now it’s become this thing. The Americans are #blodsmak. Everybody’s in on it. It’s amazing. [00:00:00] S0: I can feel the energy of it. It’s not a culture that I think would quite work in San Francisco. I don’t know if that’s something that you can do uniquely…
· Jack Altman, Max Junestrand, Chetan Puttagunta
[00:00:00] S0: I can feel the energy of it. It’s not a culture that I think would quite work in San Francisco. I don’t know if that’s something that you can do uniquely… [00:00:00] S1: Well, when we open our San Francisco office, they’re going to taste the blodsmak. [00:00:00] S0: I love it. My last question. You just raised a big round, which is awesome. Congrats. What does this mean for the future? What’s coming? [00:00:00] S1: Maybe first off, just to give you a bit of insight into the round. Every round at Legora since Chetan has been a preempted round. I don’t think I’ve ever actually gone out to fundraise since the seed round. It’s been very pleasant. We actually also have a history of taking the lowest term sheets. So this is funny. We were negotiating the number of shares that Chetan was going to buy, on Excel, in front of us. He goes, “I’ve never ever bought a company where I didn’t get 20%.” And I go, “Well, I’m never going to dilute more than 17.5%.” We sort of look at each other and go, I guess we’re in a bit of a stalemate. It was like the immovable object meets the unstoppable force. So we put it on Excel. We write down the exact number of shares, and we start going decimal by decimal until we’re both— [00:00:00] S0: Wow. That is so legal coded. Just the nerdy Excel. [00:00:00] S1: It was wild. So you end up investing like 19.521%. We’re both equally unhappy, or happy. I think we’re both happy. [00:00:00] S2: Of course.