Inside Legora: Jude Law Generated $50M Pipeline | Are They Undervalued at $5.5BN? | Patrick Forquer

1. 0:00 – 1:12

   Intro

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      How much did the Jude Law cost?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer0:01

      I can tell you it was worth every penny.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:03

      Was it?

   4. PFPatrick Forquer0:03

      So last month alone, we generated over $50 million of qualified pipe.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:08

      [upbeat music] Joining me in the hot seat, we have Patrick Forquer, CRO at Legora, the fastest growing enterprise business ever to hit $100 million in ARR.

   6. PFPatrick Forquer0:18

      When I started, we were at 40 people. Today, we're over 500.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings0:22

      Get your notebooks out. This is a masterclass in company scaling.

   8. PFPatrick Forquer0:25

      When we get into a deal, when we get into a pilot, we convert pilots 78% of the time into a closed-won opportunity. It's a death match on every deal. It's super competitive. We've got to play defense and offense at the same time, and that's what makes it fun. This market is being made right now. This is one of the hottest markets of all time. It's more about time than money right now. When you have momentum and you have an advantage, press the advantage.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings0:47

      Ready to go? [upbeat music] Patrick, dude, I've heard so many good things. I was literally just chatting to Chetan and to Logan before this show. They gave me phenomenally helpful insight, uh, especially Logan. So thank you so much for joining me, dude.

   10. PFPatrick Forquer1:11

       Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's

2. 1:12 – 5:37

   The Biggest Sales Lesson Carried From Braze to Legora

   1. PFPatrick Forquer1:12

      awesome to be here.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings1:13

      So you were at Braze for six years.

   3. PFPatrick Forquer1:15

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings1:16

      What was the single biggest sales lesson that you took with you from Braze to Legora?

   5. PFPatrick Forquer1:21

      That's a great question. Um, I think the biggest thing that we did really well at Braze that I've sort of taken over is, is implementation change management. So Braze is really hard to implement, or at least it was, uh, when I was there. Uh, so, you know, you're on a legacy product. You're consolidating one, two, three, four, five different tools into one tool. Implementations take, you know, six to 12 months. It's a lot of effort. There's a lot of, you know, stakeholder management, technical work streams, all these different things. And for us at Legora, obviously we have an amazing product, but at the end of the day, you know, our focus and our obsession is around, like, helping our, our customers adopt those tools, like the Legora tools, into their workflows, which is really hard. So general change management strategies and take, you know, all the learnings I took from Braze and, and taking that at Legora is probably the biggest thing.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings2:07

      So I had Matt Fitzpatrick on the show, and this is why [laughs] I don't normally send out the schedules because they just kind of go by the wayside very, very quickly.

   7. PFPatrick Forquer2:15

      [laughs]

   8. HSHarry Stebbings2:15

      But, like, Matt Fit- Fitzpatrick, who's, like, this, um, CEO of Invisible, which is a data provider.

   9. PFPatrick Forquer2:20

      Yeah.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings2:20

       Um, and he was like, "Oh, you can't sell into enterprise without FDEs today."

   11. PFPatrick Forquer2:24

       Yeah.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings2:25

       Is that true? And when you reflect back on what works in change management, what's the biggest advice?

   13. PFPatrick Forquer2:33

       Yeah, so there's a couple things that are still true, and then I think some things that are different-

   14. HSHarry Stebbings2:36

       Yeah

   15. PFPatrick Forquer2:36

       ... like in an agentic world. So the things that are still true is you still need a tremendous amount of executive sponsorship and support.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings2:42

       Yeah.

   17. PFPatrick Forquer2:42

       Uh, the joke we used to make when I worked in consulting was the two things people hate the most are the way things are and change.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings2:47

       [laughs] Yeah.

   19. PFPatrick Forquer2:48

       So, so you need, you know, top-down, uh, sponsorship. You need, you know, bottoms-up sort of champion building, all the sort of normal, um, you know, adoption frameworks that you would use in traditional change management. I think the biggest thing with a- agentic work and why FDEs are required, and we have both forward deploy engineers, but we also have forward deploy legal engineers-

   20. HSHarry Stebbings3:06

       Mm

   21. PFPatrick Forquer3:06

       ... who are typ- you know, big law attorneys who understand how individual practice areas work within a law firm as well as how corporate legal departments work within that sort of broader context. And you have, like, with an agentic tool like Legora, you log in and you see the agent. It's like the proverbial blank page, right? There's no sequential step of things that you click like in SaaS. In SaaS, it was like you used to do things this way, and now you do things this way, and this is why this is better, and this is all the sort of b- business impact. With an agent, it's like, what do you want it to do, right? And most people don't think about their work in terms of, like, systems thinking, in terms of what's the goal of what I'm doing, what are the steps I need to take to achieve the goal, and what are the tools, skills, and resources I need at each step, and, you know, who's in the loop at each decision-making inflection point, you know, to sort of progress this to, to achieving the goal. Most businesses don't write things down like that. They don't think like that. And so having these forward deploy folks who can do two things: integrate Legora into sort of the broader tech ecosystem, so we have access to all the various tools and resources that we need to accomplish the goal, but also leveraging these legal engineers to say, "Hey, we know how, you know, XYZ M&A, you know, workflow works in practice. This is how you do it before agents. This is how you do it in Legora." Um, that's a very-- that, that's the sort of hard yards and, and where we spend a lot of time.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings4:22

       What level of contract do we need to justify an FDE model, which is more costly? It's human hours upfront. It's margin reduction. What level of ACV do you think is needed?

   23. PFPatrick Forquer4:34

       Well, it's a great question, and people keep asking me why we raise so much money, and I'm like, "Lawyers are expensive, man." [laughs] You know? It's like, it's, uh [laughs] we, you know, we can afford to take, uh, you know, to take this sort of human, this very human-centric approach right now. But we do it for, you know, pretty much anything in, in, in six figures and above. Um, you, you've gotta really lean in and make that, make it happen because otherwise what you do is you sell, uh, you're in, in danger of selling software that doesn't get used. And our-- we're very focused on, you know, again, like I said, adoption frameworks and making sure that if we sell you 10 licenses, that you use all 10 and you get a lot of value out of it.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings5:08

       And we're gonna go to, like, metrics that matter adoption frame-wise.

   25. PFPatrick Forquer5:11

       Yeah.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings5:11

       I do just wanna ask kind of on the advice side, there's a lot of operators who are at traditional SaaS companies, traditional enterprise companies, and are contemplating, "Should I move to an AI company? There's so much hype. There's so much buzz around them. I don't want to be left behind."

   27. PFPatrick Forquer5:27

       Mm-hmm.

   28. HSHarry Stebbings5:28

       Braze is an incredible company, but it's a traditional company.

   29. PFPatrick Forquer5:31

       Mm-hmm.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings5:31

       Um, what advice would you have for those operators who are thinking about moving to an AI first company

3. 5:37 – 7:33

   Should You Leave Traditional SaaS for an AI Company?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings5:37

      and a next gen company?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer5:38

      Yeah, for sure. And, and I've become that person at Braze that people call when they're, "Oh, you know, I'm thinking about leaving," and, "How do you think about it?" And da, da, da. So I've, I've, I've had this, this talk a lot with, with friends and colleagues, andWell, the first thing is always, it's what do you wanna do? Because I can tell you working in this world is, is completely insane and unhinged, and it's over- it's all-consuming. So you've really gotta want to do it. You've gotta wanna lean in, and it's very different than traditional SaaS. The pace of development, the pace of the market, um, in terms of the competitive market, competitive dynamics, and things like that, um, it's, it's very different, and you've gotta really wanna come in and build and figure stuff out and do things differently. Get a little uncomfortable. If you're okay with that, um, I'm always encouraging people to make the leap.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings6:23

      What's insane and unhinged?

   4. PFPatrick Forquer6:25

      [lips smack] If you think about the news that comes out every week, like the competitive set, the model capabilities, you know, who's buying what. There's so much sort of hype around even in our, even in just our space. You know, every time we win a deal or lose a deal, there's a, there's a, there's a PR, you know, announcement about-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings6:43

      Yeah

   6. PFPatrick Forquer6:43

      ... about it. So the level of pressure, the level of development, and then the, the product development specifically. Like the product from Legora a year ago I thought was incredible. You know, I quit my job and joined the company. I was so excited about it. But that versus what we have now is, you know, night and day. And so your ability to stay on top of it, to learn, and to like have that level of deep product expertise is really tough, and you've gotta, like I said, you've gotta take it very seriously in terms of enablement and education.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings7:09

      I can't remember if it was Logan or Chathan, and so I'm gonna give credit to both of them.

   8. PFPatrick Forquer7:13

      Okay.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings7:13

      But they said that you've been phenomenal in terms of bluntly creating a new playbook for this era.

   10. PFPatrick Forquer7:18

       Yeah.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings7:19

       And I think what's challenging with what you said there with the transience of models, competition, you name it, is like your playbook becomes relatively irrelevant.

   12. PFPatrick Forquer7:28

       Yes.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings7:29

       What remains from traditional SaaS playbooks [chuckles] and what's like, "That is

4. 7:33 – 9:00

   What Still Works From the Old SaaS Playbook and What's Dead

   1. HSHarry Stebbings7:33

      useless now. Get rid"?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer7:34

      The one area I still like to ground my team in is we wanna be customer obsessed, and you wanna have the... There's a guy, Brian Walsh of Force Management taught me this phrase, positive business intent. So if you're there and you're showing up and you're genuinely like taking the point of view of I wanna... I'm here to help. I'm here to help transform your business and make a big impact and help to, uh, help you win, I think people can feel that. And be prepared, be professional. You know, come with a point of view. Understand their business. Do your homework. All the stuff that you would do from a preparatory perspective, like you still have to do. You still have to prepare and, and take it, take the point of view of like understanding their business deeply so you can understand, you know, the impact that you can make sort of long term. That's still the same. But, you know, at Braze we never ran pilots. In Legora we just, we run pilots all the time, as an example. So there's a tremendous amount of education you have to do because as we were talking before the show, I think AI literacy generally in the market, not just within the legal context, but AI literacy generally is very, very low. And even when we're working with firms who have, you know, put a ton of investment and enablement into it, uh, you know, the models are developing, the capabilities are developing, and staying on top of it is like, is, is a big challenge. And we view part of our job as being that partner to help you stay up to speed with, you know, the cutting edge technology and everything you can do with it. So that part is, is quite different.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings8:53

      Totally get that. Does the traditional sales playbook work of old in a new SaS- in a new AI

5. 9:00 – 10:22

   Demo Early: How Selling AI Agents Changes the Sales Motion

   1. HSHarry Stebbings9:00

      world?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer9:01

      [lips smack] I think, I think it's a, it's a blend. There's certain things you have to throw out. Like the, the tradit-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings9:06

      What's thrown out?

   4. PFPatrick Forquer9:07

      So the traditional SaaS playbook is like you, you don't wanna demo. For example, the old school SaaS thing is like the products weren't very good. You know, you wanna hold the demo as long as possible, do discovery, build rapport, do all these things, and then you demo in like the second or third meeting. That's what like the old school guys would, would tell you. With Legora and with, with agentic tools, you have to still do discovery and still come with a point of view, but you have to use the product to sort of show what the future looks like. Because w- and especially for us in the category creation moment, you're dealing with what they call traditionally unrealized pain. So you're not re- we're not typically, you know, replacing a tool. Okay, I mean, occasionally w- we will be. But more often than not, we're sort of the first tool of its kind sort of coming into the organization. And so you have to be al- willing to be audible ready to ask questions, and then be able to pivot really quickly into building like an agentic workflow off the cuff as you're talking to someone, and that's quite, that's quite difficult.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings10:03

      Can we actually use that as a way of explaining the valuation? 'Cause I think, you know, I think people question the multiple. As we said, it raised a lot of money and at a $5.5 billion, I think it was post, which is public. But people are like, "Wow, that's, that's what you have to assume a lot." And you gave me an answer before, which I'd love for you to share 'cause

6. 10:22 – 11:52

   Legora at $5.5B: How Do You Justify That Multiple?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings10:22

      I thought it was a [chuckles] good one. But like how do you think about that expansion from where we are to where we can be in terms of what Legora does?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer10:30

      Yeah. So if you, if you look at the legal tech sort of market, I think it's like $40 billion was, is a number that, that I see sort of floating around. Depends on who you talk to. But legal tech generally is a $40 billion market. So then if you look at us, you look at our competitive set valuation, like, you know, that sort of doesn't add up. But then if you look at sort of legal services more, more broadly, that's a trillion-dollar market. And, and certainly there's a bunch of work within that that's not work that's done by law firms, for example, but it's more sort of like rote repeatable, um, you know, document extraction t- type of, type of work, and that's where we see ourselves really sort of playing in the long term is not just the legal tech market, but there's an element of the services market as well where, you know, there's a high degree of application for Legora.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings11:14

      I totally get that. [chuckles] I, I wanna go to the start of the, the funnel, so to speak. Because again, this was Chathan or Logan. I can't believe I'm forgetting it. Age, my friend-

   4. PFPatrick Forquer11:23

      [laughs]

   5. HSHarry Stebbings11:24

      ... it's a killer. Um-

   6. PFPatrick Forquer11:25

      Absolutely.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings11:25

      [laughs] Uh, you said it's insane and unhinged. It's the same for media, by the way.

   8. PFPatrick Forquer11:29

      Yes.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings11:30

      I'm in venture and media-

   10. PFPatrick Forquer11:31

       Yeah

   11. HSHarry Stebbings11:31

       ... and so I'm like double fucked. [laughs]

   12. PFPatrick Forquer11:33

       I know, right. [laughs] The busiest guy in, in venture and media right now.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings11:37

       Oh, honestly, it's, it is a savage. Well, I can't wait for them to create an AI Harry.

   14. PFPatrick Forquer11:40

       [laughs]

   15. HSHarry Stebbings11:41

       Um, if Legora can do that, I'll pay double. Um, but, uh, if we start at the pipe, what is the biggest lesson in how to construct an effective pipe in an AI world and how that pipeline

7. 11:52 – 27:59

   How the Jude Law Brand Campaign Generated $50M of Qualified Pipe

   1. HSHarry Stebbings11:52

      building process is done?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer11:54

      This has been a big point of evolution for us. SoFor example, we just did a big brand campaign with Jude Law. But before you do something like that, you have to do a ton of work in terms of the plumbing, in terms of, like, what's our inbound lead scoring? How do we do data enrichment? How do we do lead routing and lead scoring, um, from a probabilistic perspective? So there's a ton of infrastructure you have to put in place first before you can really sort of go big on, on, you know, from an inbound perspective. So, um, on that basis, we've done a ton of work leading up to that campaign, but, like, even last year of, like, getting our systems in place, getting the territory assignments in place, like, all the rules and sort of, uh, you know, SLAs around if we get a lead, you have to respond in this amount of time. There's a... And even last year, you know, from an SMB perspective, we had so many leads that we weren't able to follow up with them as, as many as we, as we wanted, you know, in a timely, in a timely way. So the other thing was staffing. You know, we've had to hire a tremendous amount. When I started, we were at 40 people. Today we're over 500, um, and we still need more people and more systems to keep up with the, with the demand.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings12:55

      How do you do lead scoring today? Is it simply a size of contract?

   4. PFPatrick Forquer12:58

      Yeah. So right now you look at the size of the firm, you look at the number of attorneys and compliance workers i- internally, and then you look at where they're located, and you route it to the right team.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings13:08

      Okay. Got you. Geo plays a role in that?

   6. PFPatrick Forquer13:11

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we've got teams all over the place. In Europe, we have pods looking after every major market. And for example, in Germany, we're doing so well that we just opened an office in Munich. So we-

   7. HSHarry Stebbings13:21

      So you run the GM model. I'm seeing this more and more where you have, like, mini CEOs of each country. ElevenLabs has very much pivoted to that.

   8. PFPatrick Forquer13:27

      Yeah. But e- exactly. So we've got Leo, who runs our European business.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings13:30

      Yeah.

   10. PFPatrick Forquer13:30

       And then under Leo, we've got a number of folks with- from a country perspective, um, and the, and a team behind them to go execute. So we have to be really cognizant of there's a lot of, you know, Europe- European data sovereignty, uh, different sort of regulatory compliance things, so w- we have to have teams that really specialize in that.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings13:45

       Ah, no, you've got to, you've got to get a permit to go to the bathroom. I'm sorry. [laughs]

   12. PFPatrick Forquer13:48

       Exactly. Exactly. [laughs]

   13. HSHarry Stebbings13:51

       Yeah. [laughs]

   14. PFPatrick Forquer13:51

       I gotta get my ITA on the way in.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings13:52

       How you want to get up to go to the bathroom, you need a permit for that too. [laughs]

   16. PFPatrick Forquer13:55

       Yes. Yeah. It was 25.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings13:56

       Uh, can I ask, how much did the Jude Law cost?

   18. PFPatrick Forquer13:59

       Y- I can't say the exact number, but I can tell you it was worth every penny.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings14:02

       Was it? Okay.

   20. PFPatrick Forquer14:03

       Yeah, 100%. So last month alone, we gener-

   21. HSHarry Stebbings14:06

       'Cause people are gonna watch this, and they're gonna say, "Harry's an investor, and it's bias." I wasn't sure about it.

   22. PFPatrick Forquer14:14

       Yeah.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings14:14

       Well, and, and so, like, tell me it was worth it, and I'm thrilled 'cause I want it to be.

   24. PFPatrick Forquer14:18

       So last month alone, we generated over $50 million of qualified pipe. And that's, that's not pi- that's not just inbound leads. That's pipeline that we talked to, qualified, and moved into, like, a sales conversation.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings14:30

       Can I be blunt? What was the month before to give us context on, like, is that good or bad?

   26. PFPatrick Forquer14:34

       Um, that was a pretty big jump month over month. I don't know the exact number. I don't wanna, I don't wanna misquote.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings14:39

       Yeah.

   28. PFPatrick Forquer14:39

       But, um, you know, from, from that perspective, uh, we- we're seeing a ton of interest and demand. And look, when I, when I started-

   29. HSHarry Stebbings14:46

       So lawyers give a shit about Jude Law. Uh, uh-

   30. PFPatrick Forquer14:49

       It's, it's... It, it honestly wasn't even necessarily for the folks. The lawyers in the big markets know about us, right? It's more for the, the folks that don't, and we just want that sort of brand awareness 'cause I can tell you, when I started in the U... I, I start- I was our first US hire. You know, the first office that we had in the US was my apartment in Brooklyn. And, [laughs] and we, you know, as I sort of was slowly building out the team over there, no one knew who we were outside of the people sort of in the know in the legal tech community. And so for us, you know, we were late to a lot of deals, and when we get into a deal, when we get into a pilot, you know, we convert pilots 78% of the time into a close one opportunity. So we're doing really well in terms of funnel progression, but the biggest challenge that we had was just not being in the room. And so for us, brand awareness is everything, and the strength of our brand is, is better than ever. And yeah, you know, the Jude Law campaign wasn't, wasn't f- you know, for everyone, but overall, we got really positive feedback, and the biggest thing is just brand awareness for us.
8. 27:59 – 33:53

   How Legora Gets Access to Senior Stakeholders So Easily

   1. HSHarry Stebbings27:59

      because I wanna progress this"?

   2. PFPatrick Forquer28:00

      I have to say one of the things about Legora that's like floored me in-- You know, at Braze we had this problem. So Braze, the, the executive buyer was the CMO.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings28:09

      Yeah.

   4. PFPatrick Forquer28:09

      And getting access to a CMO was like so hard and we would get it done, you know, very, very rarely and we always, you know, we sort of kn- bend over backwards to, to get this done. With Legora because there's so much chatter in the market about AI and the firms and corporates both wanna understand what others are doing, we actually get access to power pretty easily. And people wanna learn because on the law firm side they're getting asked by their clients, "How are you using AI and what tools are you using? And like what are the use cases and where are we gonna see this value in our bill?" for example. And on the corporate side they're getting a ton of pressure from the board and the CEO of like, "Hey, go figure this shit out." Like, you know, "We need to oper- we need to optimize like X, Y, Z process and AI everything." And so we get access to senior stakeholders who wanna like lean in and learn from us. But I think typically if you don't have that access early to your, to your question, what we try to do is we try to, you know, focus on the highest value use cases and highest value impact as quickly as possible. So you wanna grab attention really, really fast. And lucky for us, the Legora product's awesome. So coming in with the perspective on the company and the role based on the ICP that you're talking to, talking about some of the high value use cases that we have, learning about what's most important to them, and then showing them how we'd solve that quickly, they're like, "Wow, I want to show this to my boss." And that's generally a framework that's been successful.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings29:35

      I come from an industry that is traditionally called sheep-like-

   6. PFPatrick Forquer29:38

      [laughs]

   7. HSHarry Stebbings29:38

      ... in terms of following others.

   8. PFPatrick Forquer29:39

      Uh-huh.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings29:40

      I, I don't understand why anyone would attribute that to us. Um, [laughs] to what extent is legal a sheep-like industry where it's like, oh, uh, Clifford Chance, Slaughter and May, you name it, use X. To what extent do they follow others?

   10. PFPatrick Forquer29:59

       There's certainly an aspect of a flight to safety during these, these sort of category creation moments 'cause this is all new. The sort of general understanding of how agents work and how AI works and how to think about use case design is still being developed and the sort of, you know, the executive buyers at the firms and at the companies, you know, generally aren't as up to speed on, on that. Some of them are but, you know, broadly probably not. And so there is this flight to safety and I think generally people wanna feel like, you know, you never got fired for hiring IBM.And at the end of the day, there's an aspect, there is definitely an element of that. And-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings30:36

       Do you not feel both you and Harvey are IBM at this stage?

   12. PFPatrick Forquer30:39

       I was gonna say, last year we were, we were, you know, the, the new entrant. We were trying to make our name, and we were, you know, peo-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings30:46

       You were not IBM at that stage

   14. PFPatrick Forquer30:47

       ... We, we were definitely not-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings30:48

       Yeah. Yeah

   16. PFPatrick Forquer30:48

       ... last year. I think at this point, you know, working with the firms that we work with, you know, having, you know, Devoe Voise and, um, you know, Linklaters and other big firms, you know, advocating for us really goes a long way, and I think we have that stamp now. But that's been a, that's been a journey that we've been on.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings31:02

       You've got, uh, you've got 20 of the 100 Am Law, yeah? And Harvey have got 40 or 60? Or 50.

   18. PFPatrick Forquer31:09

       Um, I don't know their numbers. Yeah.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings31:10

       I, I think they said 50 of Am Law.

   20. PFPatrick Forquer31:13

       Yeah, 50. Yeah.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings31:13

       Does, does that mean we're fighting over the next 30, or does that mean we're fighting for each other's, candidly?

   22. PFPatrick Forquer31:20

       Both. Yeah.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings31:22

       It does?

   24. PFPatrick Forquer31:22

       For sure. Yeah. I mean, they know who we work with. We know who they work with. We're both trying to get in. Um, uh, we- we're very aware that, you know, they know who our customers are. We know who theirs are. We're both going aggressively after it. And also scaling up quickly to go after the next, the next 50 or whatever the number is. So we've got to play defense and offense at the same time, and that's what makes it fun.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings31:43

       God, the old SaaS world feels quite nice [laughs] in comparison.

   26. PFPatrick Forquer31:45

       Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's like 30% growth a year, you know?

   27. HSHarry Stebbings31:49

       Do you guys-

   28. PFPatrick Forquer31:49

       Quarterly release cycles

   29. HSHarry Stebbings31:50

       ... do you guys pay attention to social? 'Cause, like, for VCs, no, but, like, you saw it last week, the VCs. Like Paul Graham tweets-

   30. PFPatrick Forquer31:58

       Yeah
9. 33:53 – 46:48

   How Legora Onboards 40-50 New Hires Every Two Weeks

   1. HSHarry Stebbings33:53

      actually.

   2. PFPatrick Forquer33:54

      Well, and this is another thing from a, as a, as a leader that's very different than in the SaaS environment.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings33:58

      Mm.

   4. PFPatrick Forquer33:58

      'Cause if you go back to the Sa-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings33:59

      How so? 'Cause I thought, like, talent development would maybe be the same.

   6. PFPatrick Forquer34:02

      Well, yes, but in, in the SaaS world it's much more predictable and on this, like, very sort of clear, slow operating model. So you had your quarterly releases with some monthly sort of shipping in between. Ahead of the quarterly release you've got all this documentation. You do a, a big certification. Like, you go through all these programs. With Legora, you know, we do big, huge product things like every week, and the team has to stay on top of that, and there's no way you could do, you know, a global certification program for every big, every big feature we launch, you know, in real time all the time. And so we have to do a lot at a team level, regional level, and we do a lot async with video content. You know, we use Notion really heavily. Um, the product teams really embed with the individual sales and legal engineering teams and engagement folks to make sure that, you know, we're all up to speed. But you can't do it all centrally. You have to really distribute through both async video and Notion content as well as, like, team level enablement. So we activate on our, our product guys in that way.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings35:02

      Uh, can I j- uh, don't worry about being too specific. How does that look then for, like, sales training then? Like, first week, what do I get? I get, like, a Notion link and, like, a load of video libraries?

   8. PFPatrick Forquer35:13

      [laughs] No. So this is actually something we've really elevated-

   9. HSHarry Stebbings35:16

      Yeah

   10. PFPatrick Forquer35:16

       ... and something I'm really proud of. So when I first joined, uh, Vilgot told me to go to Best Buy and buy an Apple computer, and then I went and had a couple videos of Max doing a demo. Now every two weeks we have a new hire class, and at this point it's between 40 and 50 people joining every, every two weeks. We send everyone to Stockholm, do an immersive five days. And this is not, like, something where you're just gonna go do a couple video things and then go, like, walk around Stockholm. Like, this is intense, immersive. You know, we expect GTMs and LEs to come out of that week to be, you know, ready to go. You know, from a ramp perspective, it, it's, it's a straight line up. Like, we expect people, we expect to drop people in and see them be very productive very quickly.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings35:58

       When you say ready to go, you mean they are ready to sit on calls on their own with clients?

   12. PFPatrick Forquer36:03

       Yes.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings36:05

       That's quick.

   14. PFPatrick Forquer36:06

       It's very quick. Yeah, I had a guy do an, I had a guy do in his second week do a demo with one of the biggest companies in the world, and he killed it. I, I mean, obviously I joined because, you know, the, the nature of what, of who the comp-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings36:20

       It was one of the biggest companies in the world [laughs]

   16. PFPatrick Forquer36:20

       ... of who, of who the company was.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings36:21

       Now Patrick decided to sit that one out [laughs] .

   18. PFPatrick Forquer36:22

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so I, I was sort of there for, for, you know, for, for guidance. But we expect productivity to happen very quickly, so we do an immersive first week. But then-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings36:32

       What, what does that, what does that mean, an immersive first week? I'm sorry to be specific, but, uh, there's so many founders that listen literally with notes.

   20. PFPatrick Forquer36:38

       Yeah.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings36:38

       What does an immersive first week mean?

   22. PFPatrick Forquer36:41

       So we have a cross-functional sort of education program focused on everything from, you know, this is our sales stages, this is our opportunity cycle, this is the entry and exit criteria. We do a full day of demo workUm, we have a huge library, yes, of like, uh, of, uh, Gong and, and sort of video content from, from a demo perspective. But we also do a lot of role plays. We do, and we do a lot of education on the market generally. 'Cause we're sort of... We hire a lot of lawyers. We also hire a lot of technologists. So the lawyers, you have to sort of train up on like how the, like tech stuff sort of works. And then the technologists, you have to train up on the sort of subject matter, subject matter expertise from a legal services perspective. So we have a ton of content on industry, uh, education, product education, competitive landscape. The competitive landscape, as mentioned, changes every week, so we have to update all the product information, the new product information. So we have a, we just have a, basically a university style four-day program where every department comes and enables the f- uh, and enables the new hires on that particular program and how we operate. We have all that available for them in the new hire sort of notion. And then all the new h- and then all the reps have their own personalized ramp page where we track all the metrics that we're looking at from a ramp perspective.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings37:52

       Of the 40 to 50, how many do you think make it?

   24. PFPatrick Forquer37:55

       That's a good question. When we, when we move on from sales folks, we do it typically within the first quarter, and we actually have really high retention rates relative to, to the market.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings38:05

       What are the signs that someone's not gonna make it?

   26. PFPatrick Forquer38:08

       We score demo quality using AI. Uh, we use Gong. And then you can create like a scoring mechanism for how, like the call went, the disc- how, how was the discovery framework, what was the, you know, what was the demo flow, et cetera. Um, and then when we get a red flag on that, our team goes in and, like our enablement team goes in and sort of looks at the call and does like a, a playback with that person. So if you look at call quality scoring, plus opportunity development from a pipeline perspective, you can see pretty quickly who's tracking. We know what good looks like, and we know what good doesn't look like, and you can see pretty quickly within about 45 days.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings38:43

       So is it bullshit then, the traditional notion that, oh, well, you know, enterprise is really difficult to understand whether someone's a good sales rep because the sales cycles are long?

   28. PFPatrick Forquer38:53

       That is, that is from a traditional SaaS perspective, that might still be true. With us, even our enterprise folks, when they come in, they're gonna be, you know, buried in deals within 60 days. Like our best people are closing deals typically within 90 days, even on an enterprise, uh, team. So from that perspective, because we're very hot right now, the ca- this market is being made right now. And so from an opportunity point of view, it's not like you have to go, you know, take your territory list, get your BDR, go do some account-based marketing, get the initial meetings. That's like sort of traditional. I've, you know, I've ramped cold territories before. I've managed teams that have done that in a SaaS perspective. This isn't that. This is one of the hottest markets of all time. When we drop GTMs into their book, they're into pilots. You know, they're into typically something like five pilots within their first quarter. Um, and so we're asking people to get very productive very quickly because this is not something where we can go like do a bunch of handholding for a long period of time. And we have so much inbound and so much interest that you know quickly because the volume of opportunities that they're working is much higher than it would be in a traditional SaaS environment.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings40:03

       Would you rather hire someone who has experience selling to law firms or someone who has experience selling this size of deal?

   30. PFPatrick Forquer40:12

       I would rather have someone who has this size of deal.
10. 46:48 – 48:20

    Sales Comp Multiples: 8-12x vs the 20x at ElevenLabs

    1. HSHarry Stebbings46:48

       20x.

    2. PFPatrick Forquer46:48

       Yeah.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings46:49

       And I'm like, oh my God, I feel like such a insignificant human being. [laughs]

    4. PFPatrick Forquer46:53

       [laughs] I heard that 20x number. I got so many... I mean, I obviously, I follow the show.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings46:58

       You got so many pings.

    6. PFPatrick Forquer46:58

       I got so many pings.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings46:59

       Every C- every CRO got so many pings. [laughs]

    8. PFPatrick Forquer47:00

       All my friends who are in this business were like, "Wait, what's your, [laughs] what's your multiple? Did you hear this guy?" [laughs]

    9. HSHarry Stebbings47:07

       Everyone got that.

    10. PFPatrick Forquer47:08

        Yeah, yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings47:08

        I, I feel a little bit bad for the rest of the CROs. Like, how do you think about effective sales comp setting today?

    12. PFPatrick Forquer47:16

        So, well, just to, to start it off the top, ours right now, it depends on the mar- it depends on the segment and the, and the region, but ours right now are between sort of 8 and 12x, um, is where, is where we sort of landed. But we don't just take a multiple and, like, apply that to, you know, the sort of mar- competitive market OTE. You've gotta really take, like, a bottoms-up approach to it and look at all of the metrics we were just talking about before. So look at ramp time, productivity per head, ARR per head, uh, pipe, pipe, pipe evolution within certain territories. We did a bottoms-up approach of that last year, and we got to, we got to the sort of range. But we also had a year last year where we absolutely blew out every metric that we put in front of the team. So, you know, I don't know how effectively we're doing that, but that's, that's the, that's how we're doing it right now.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings48:05

        But you think 8 to 12x today is where you sit, which is good.

    14. PFPatrick Forquer48:08

        Yeah.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings48:09

        What percent of people should hit that?

    16. PFPatrick Forquer48:12

        Well, our average attainment last year was 280%.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings48:17

        Wow.

    18. PFPatrick Forquer48:18

        So-

    19. HSHarry Stebbings48:18

        Is that ineffective

11. 48:20 – 50:33

    From $3.5M to $100M ARR: The Growth Story

    1. HSHarry Stebbings48:20

       attainment setting?

    2. PFPatrick Forquer48:21

       Yeah. That was a-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings48:22

       Sorry. [laughs]

    4. PFPatrick Forquer48:22

       ... bad job by me.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings48:23

       Yeah. No offense. [laughs]

    6. PFPatrick Forquer48:25

       Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, when I started, again, it, just going back for context, like, we were 3.5 million and, you know, Chetan and the Redpoint guys were like, "Can we do 25?" And that felt... I remember giving-- We had, we raised our Series B, and I remember giving a big, like, rah-rah. We had everyone to Stockholm. We did a big rollout of-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings48:43

       When Logan did it.

    8. PFPatrick Forquer48:44

       Yeah. We-

    9. HSHarry Stebbings48:45

       I give, uh, you know, I, I'm a VC, so I give credit to other VCs for a living. But I give credit to Logan on that one, which is, like, he paid up in advance for something that wasn't that obvious, respectfully.

    10. PFPatrick Forquer48:55

        Uh-huh.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings48:56

        And like credit to him.

    12. PFPatrick Forquer48:58

        Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he got me ... That's how I got connected with, with Max was, was through, was through Logan. And, um, you know, definitely he plug- he actually introduced me to, to Braze as well. So, I, I'm, I'm always a, a big fan of the, [laughs] of the Redpoint team.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings49:12

        But sorry, you joined and it was like three, I think.

    14. PFPatrick Forquer49:14

        Yeah, about three and a half. But so then we're like, "Can we do 25?" And I remember we were at like seven when we raised a Series B, and we had everyone to Stockholm, and I'm giving a big, you know, rah, rah speech to the global team at that point, which fit in the kitchen of our Stockholm office basically. And w- we obviously ... So we hit 25 in Q3, and then we went nuts in Q4 and like blew through every ... You know, we ended the year at, at 70. Uh, and then obviously crossed 100, um, earlier this year. So the projections are very hard from, from our side. So from a forecast perspective at the beginning of the year, you know, I only gave guidance to the board based on the six-month, rolling six-month basis. So at this point, based on the data that we have and the sort of pipe, pipe analysis that we have, we feel pretty good about our, our ability to forecast the sort of top line business. The individual productivity stuff can be a little all over the place 'cause obviously there's like blue bird deals that, that happen and things like that. And we also have a ton of, um, inner quarter open and close. And so being able to forecast that is a little bit of a pin the tail on the donkey challenge, but we- we're getting better at that piece of it.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings50:20

        What's your biggest advice to other CROs when you look at the CROs that ping you on the 20X [laughs] that we discussed? What's your biggest advice to CROs on how the fuck to do forecasting effectively in this very dynamic

12. 50:33 – 1:10:33

    How to Do Forecasting When the Market Is Elastic and Unpredictable

    1. HSHarry Stebbings50:33

       landscape?

    2. PFPatrick Forquer50:34

       It's really hard. And the first thing I say is you gotta have a little grace with yourself and have, and set expectations appropriately. 'Cause in this market, it's been, it's been relatively elastic so far and, you know, that won't continue forever, but right now that's, that's the sort of the, um, experience that we're having. So I do a, I do, I do two things. I do like a rep and manager commit roll-up, like bet your life. Like rep roll-up, first line manager, second line manager.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings50:59

       Sorry, what does that actually mean? I'm, I'm sorry for being, uh ... What do you, rep roll-up? What's the rep roll-up?

    4. PFPatrick Forquer51:03

       Yeah. So you have as a ... If you're a, if you're a dir- sales director at Legora, and let's say you have a team of eight people. You go, "All eight people, like bet your life how much ARR you're gonna close this quarter." Like, you know, that level of seriousness. And then that manager has to take the rep roll-up, and then, you know, they have to commit whatever number, uh, based on that sort of input from, from the reps. The directors take that to the VPs. The VP ta- the VPs take their director roll-ups, and then they commit like a regional number. And right now we have, you know, we ... Uh, including India, we have five, five regions. So APJ, India, EU, the UK, and, and the US. So I take the VP roll-up, and then I compare that to like the weighted forecast. So then we've got the, we've got this amazing woman on our rev ops team, Lulu, who I worked with to sort of create this sort of weighted version of what like a monthly q- uh, sorry, a weekly, monthly, quarterly forecast would look like based on the opportunity stages. So with that, you have to have really, really tight rigor around opportunity management. So the stages have to, you know, the stages and the amounts on the opportunities have to be really dialed and updated in real time. In last quarter, the rep ro- the, the sort of reg- the rep regional roll-up and what we call Lulu cast, which is the weighted sort of, sort of what I call, you know, the math version of the forecast, were the same. And we were pretty accurate on, on both.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings52:24

       Where do stages go most wrong?

    6. PFPatrick Forquer52:27

       If you don't have really good entry and exit criteria that you could explain to your grandma.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings52:31

       What does entry and exit criteria mean?

    8. PFPatrick Forquer52:33

       So in our, let's say in our sale, i- if you think about a sales process, there's sort of the two-sided like buyer journey, right? There's the funnel on the way in to close one, and then there's the funnel on the way out as you look for like advocacy and adoption. On the way in, you know, let's say we have five sales stages. So for example, I mentioned the qu- the, the pipeline that we generated off of Jude Law. You know, to get into a qualified pipe, like you have to go through a discovery call where we ask, you know, uh, we ask questions around like the buying process, what they're looking for, interested in, things like that. Um, and then to progress that to the next stage, certain things that they say have to be true, meaning like they have to be in a buying cycle, have to have budget. You like think about BANT frameworks, like budget, authority, need, time. Uh, and then as you move into the qualification, um, criteria, that's like, okay, the next stage is the pilot. What do we need to do to get into the pilot? I sort of alluded to is executive buy-in, InfoSec, you know, budget allocation, things like that. So if you get that right and you have consistency across like the global teams, then typically the forecasting is right. And if you get the white, the right weighting based on your sort of funnel progression historically, then you can get to a weighted forecast that's like directionally accurate.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings53:41

       You said there about the different regions that you have.

    10. PFPatrick Forquer53:43

        Mm-hmm.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings53:44

        If you were advising CROs, CEOs today, do you have to be everywhere all at once today?

    12. PFPatrick Forquer53:50

        Yes.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings53:51

        Hmm. That's different.

    14. PFPatrick Forquer53:53

        It's different. And the speed at which we're doing it is, is very different. Um, going back to the Braze experience, you know, New York Tech, you know, we had a London office. That was like sort of the next move, but it took us a really long time, for example, to expand into Germany, which, which we eventually did. Um, expanding into Japan and other places, whereas, you know, all of the ... We just opened in Germany, we just opened in Spain, we've opened five offices, maybe six in the US, you know, Sydney, um, B- uh, Bangalore. Like we, we've been, we've been all over the place.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings54:23

        India feels like a strange one.

    16. PFPatrick Forquer54:24

        Yeah.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings54:25

        It's just such a different universe.What was the thing you buy in India and how's India going?

    18. PFPatrick Forquer54:30

        We typically follow the ball in terms of pipeline. And so from that perspective, we had a ton of initial interest. Uh, we have, we have great interest in the Middle East. We have great interest in India. So it was a, it was a ton of inbound sort of signal.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings54:42

        Where's the hardest? Again, Carl has, uh, spoke about Japan and South Korea. I'm friends with Daniel from UiPath, who always says about kind of that being a difficult region. Where's the hardest?

    20. PFPatrick Forquer54:51

        That ju- That, that region's very hard, and we've, we've been consulting a lot of our investors, a lot of advisors on how best to enter those, those markets. But yeah, I, I would say, uh, APAC is probably the most complex. And, and certainly each region has its own nuance with respect to, like, data hosting requirements, processing requirements. Like, you can't process stuff in Europe or the US. You have to process certain things in region. Some of the model providers don't provide... You know, for example, if you're selling into China, certain model providers don't provide access to the models in China and other places. So y- there's definitely some architectural work that goes into it, and there's a ton of work we're also doing. We announced today a big project we've done with McKinsey, you know, focusing on European, uh, public sector work. And there's, you know, if you think about the FedRAMP in the US, there's all kinds of things that are really hard from a technology perspective that you have to keep in mind.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings55:39

        With the greatest of respect, and I'm probably gonna get in trouble, sovereignty is kind of an interesting word that's thrown around.

    22. PFPatrick Forquer55:44

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings55:45

        Um, but to what extent do you see Americans choose Americans and Europeans choose European? Is that a thing?

    24. PFPatrick Forquer55:52

        It's definitely a thing.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings55:53

        It is.

    26. PFPatrick Forquer55:53

        It's definitely a thing. And certainly we have the perception when we come into a deal that, that I think everyone just ... People think I'm from Sweden, for example. A, a lot of people are-

    27. HSHarry Stebbings56:05

        You, you, you look Swedish.

    28. PFPatrick Forquer56:05

        [laughs] I know.

    29. HSHarry Stebbings56:06

        No, seriously.

    30. PFPatrick Forquer56:07

        Yeah.
13. 1:10:33 – 1:13:37

    Why Investors Are as Important to Win as the Deals Themselves

    1. PFPatrick Forquer1:10:33

       that sooner.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:34

       It's interesting. It's almost like a land grab on investors as well. [laughs]

    3. PFPatrick Forquer1:10:36

       Ex- exactly. Exactly. Like, if you look at our last fundraise, our CFO, David, described it as the investment syndicate. It sort of reminds me of the Mission Impossible [laughs] syndicate.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:44

       I do. One of my friends is a GP at Adtri in Australia.

    5. PFPatrick Forquer1:10:48

       Yeah, yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:48

       And he pinged me about Legora 'cause they joined the round.

    7. PFPatrick Forquer1:10:50

       Exactly.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:51

       Um, and it's like land grab on Australia. [laughs]

    9. PFPatrick Forquer1:10:53

       Exactly. We want people that are, are leaning in and gonna really help.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:58

        Yeah, no, I totally get that. We mentioned Jude Law. What personality s- individual brand would you most like to be in the next Legora ad?

    11. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:08

        Well, we have one coming up with Aaron Judge that's gonna be awesome.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:13

        That's pretty cool.

    13. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:14

        Yeah, very cool. And he-- I can tell you with a, I have a first grader in Brooklyn, and you go to drop off at, at, at his elementary school, and the number of Aaron Judge jerseys is astronomical. So very cool from, from a, from a New York and US perspective. We're really excited.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:30

        What one tool could you not live without?

    15. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:33

        I use Gemini all the time.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:34

        Wow. I wasn't expecting that.

    17. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:36

        Yeah.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:37

        What's it best for? I find it actually best for, like, transcript analysis.

    19. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:41

        It's really good at that.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:42

        Yeah.

    21. PFPatrick Forquer1:11:42

        But it also has access to all the systems of work that we use. So we use Gmail, Calendar and Google Drive. So from, you know, an agentic perspective, it has all the context, and it has all of my stuff. And so it helps me with, like, meeting prep. It helps me with managing my calendar. Uh, a lot, all, a lot of the sort of simple productivity stuff, it's, it's very good at, not to mention, you know, making funny pictures.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:05

        I have to say, I love Whisperfly.

    23. PFPatrick Forquer1:12:06

        Yeah.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:06

        Whisper-

    25. PFPatrick Forquer1:12:07

        Whisperfly is awesome. Definitely.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:08

        Fucking great.

    27. PFPatrick Forquer1:12:08

        Yeah. That's one of those viral products that everyone in Silicon Valley is, is talking about.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:13

        But it is fricking great.

    29. PFPatrick Forquer1:12:14

        It's great. It's really good.

    30. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:15

        The only shit thing is in offices.

Episode duration: 1:13:47