Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:37:49 · Gustaf Alstromer, Max Junestrand
[00:37:49] S1: So he knew everything at this point. [00:37:50] S0: Yeah. Yeah. He knows most of it. So he had two companies in the .com, both went to zero, and then he had a boat business in Archipelago when I grew up. And so I've always been surrounded by entrepreneurship, and always felt like I wanted to prove myself in that arena. I'm very competitive. I used to play video games. I used to play DOTA two, like more than I went to school. And then I think building a company is like the optimal... Like it's the biggest arena that you And can you'll either leave victorious or you'll leave defeated or you'll be okay. And I was very decided in that I should probably learn more about the world, which I thought McKinsey was gonna be a great place to start at, which I still think it is. Yep. I think it really teaches you like how to work. You learn work ethic there. But I did an internship, and so I think I I like got a bit of that even during my studies. And then we had this like pivotal moment with GPT. Yeah. And so we were talking about this, like, you weren't as as excited about investing a few years back, like, pre LLMs because there wasn't a lot of... [00:39:09] S1: There wasn't a lot going on. Like like, I think the the last year or two before COVID, there was not a lot of new ideas.
00:39:16 · Max Junestrand
[00:39:16] S0: Right. And I remember sitting down pre GPT, like Yeah. Here are all the startup ideas I can think of. Most of them were pretty boring. I I don't think most of them would have worked out. Yep. Yep. And then, like, small companies got a really big advantage versus big companies. Mhmm. And I mean, I think you saw this in just like the way that Microsoft would build copilot. It didn't work for a really long time. Yep. And I remember when that came out, we were like, oh my god, we're so screwed. You know, every lawyer already works in Word and Outlook, and now they're just gonna use Copilot, but turns out like it didn't work. And the ability for us then to still build a lot of value was huge. I think now reflecting back on that, you learn so much by having to figure it out. And I really think that the amount of things you learn is a function of the amount of discomfort that you are willing to endure. When we started Legora I was super introverted, I really didn't feel comfortable talking to customers, I wanted to code as much as possible. You know, when you have to go separate ways with an employee for the first time, like all of this is so hard. But you realize that startups is one of the places where you can learn the most in a short amount of time. I think, you know, if I were to build a company again or join a company, I still feel like I learned a lot working at other startups. I actually worked with YC startups before starting my own. And then I would say you should think really deeply about who you started with and the problem space. And I think we picked a space more than we picked a problem, which I think is like two different ways of going about it. It was completely obvious that legal and AI was going to be a thing. Yep. How it was going to be a thing was like very uncertain. And so we just said, let's march in this general direction, and then we'll figure it out. That's one way of doing it. I guess the other way of doing it is like you find a specific problem, you solve that very clearly, you generate ROI, and then you expand from that.
00:41:41 · Gustaf Alstromer, Max Junestrand
[00:41:41] S1: Yeah. You mentioned earlier... Well, I know that you are extremely competitive. How is that expressed inside Legora? Like, how does the Legora employee know that Max is a very competitive CEO [00:41:53] S0: of a weight? Everybody at Legora is like that. [00:41:55] S1: I think it's self select. How does... How's it expressed? Is it like a Friday meeting, here's our goals, and like... [00:42:00] S0: Well, yes. So we do... Everybody knows every every monthly goal. Yep. I think setting quarterly goals is like a little bit tricky. [00:42:09] S1: Is that how it was from the very beginning? Were you three of you guys?
00:42:09 · Gustaf Alstromer, Max Junestrand
[00:42:09] S1: Is that how it was from the very beginning? Were you three of you guys? [00:42:11] S0: No. Then it was no goals. Then it was just like every day you like try to maximize the outcome. Okay. And then we got, you know, when you're 750 people, you need to plan a little bit better Yep. And like have some better internal communication. Actually communication is like the thing that really breaks when you scale. Yes. I think a lot of people have talked about that already. But no, we... You really feel this drive from engineering that they want to build the best product and the best feature. And if you compare, you know, our tabular review versus, you know, the other alternatives in the market, like it's really sort of you stack rank it. Yep. And we have lots of people on vacation now in Stockholm because it's July, and most of them have have... Most of the engineers who are on vacation are like more productive than they had ever been because they're like taking a bit of time off, but then they also get to code now on problems that they wanna beat and they wanna win. And it's a team sport. And I think you can be competitive but be in a team way. And so you really need to solidify this, like, winning or losing together strategy, I think. And when we get a big win, like, that is really celebrated, and when we have a loss, we really, mourn it together. [00:43:39] S1: Yep.
00:43:39 · Gustaf Alstromer, Max Junestrand
[00:43:39] S1: Yep. [00:43:39] S0: And then we immediately make a plan of like how can we flip it? Or like how can we make a land and like turn it around? And I feel like people are in solution mode rather than like blame mode. And I think that has been a big momentum driver for us, but also we've been in chasing. There were other legal AI companies that were bigger than us when we started. And so we always felt, at least in the beginning, like we were chasing. Now we are much bigger and... [00:44:17] S1: Let's say you are the biggest one at some point very soon. [00:44:19] S0: Yes. [00:44:20] S1: Is is that gonna impact your motivation or your... So I think that [00:44:24] S0: it... So that's interesting. I I thought a lot about like what happens at that moment. Yeah. I think we need to either pick out another enemy and go like, okay. We have to be bigger than them now. Or we have to like really find this way of being better than ourselves yesterday. And I think that having competitors is a good thing. You should not be overly focused on what they're doing, but it's definitely like a carrot, I think. And it's a it's a easy thing to like rally around. Mhmm. Because what you don't want is you don't want a lot of side questing. [00:45:00] S1: Yep. [00:45:01] S0: You want everybody focused on the same thing.
00:45:01 · Max Junestrand, Gustaf Alstromer
[00:45:01] S0: You want everybody focused on the same thing. [00:45:04] S1: So one question I got from the audience is how do you become more ambitious? And when I asked this question, I'm thinking of a company I'm working with right now who is like, oh, we wanna do this country in Europe, then we're gonna do this other country in Europe. Then maybe next year, we'll do US. You guys did a lot of countries in Europe just during the batch and then like... [00:45:21] S0: And now we're at like 50 countries. [00:45:23] S1: And now you're everywhere and you scale up really quickly. Yeah. And is that ambition or is that the product was working or is... [00:45:28] S0: No. It's definitely ambition. [00:45:30] S1: Yeah. [00:45:30] S0: I mean, I think it's like... [00:45:31] S1: How does someone learn that or how does someone become more ambitious? Is that possible?