Uncapped with Jack Altman
· 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.
· Chetan Puttagunta, Max Junestrand, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: Of course. [00:00:00] S1: But the Series D has been really great because it’s the first time I’ve done it together with someone else. David, our CFO who just joined from Vanta, he’s an absolute monster. It was funny. We had our company-wide kickoff and you get to pick the song you want to walk out to. He goes, “Max, I want ‘Monster’ by Kanye West.” And I go, “Okay dude.” The lights drop and I’m like, “I have a big surprise for you everyone. David is joining us, our CFO.” The speakers just explode with this. I don’t know if you’ve heard this song. He comes up on stage with so much energy. In the references, people refer to him as the CF-Go. I was like, that’s amazing. So he and I did the round. It was super fun. It was the first time we went out to actually do a fundraise. We had a deck this time. It was wildly oversubscribed. I think we ended up having $1.5 billion in demand for the round. [00:00:00] S0: That’s a lot. [00:00:00] S1: It was crazy. But we’re super thrilled about Accel coming in and leading it. Some great participation from Menlo and Bain. [00:00:00] S0: It’s awesome. It’s a huge testament to what you’ve done. It’s super exciting. I think you’re just getting started. Max, thank you for doing this. Chetan, thank you as well. Really enjoyed it. [00:00:00] S1: Thank you so much, Jack.