I'm excited to share that we have raised $4.8 million and have re-launched as Ivo.
When I was a lawyer knee-deep in contract review, I had a strong, nagging feeling that things could be better. That feeling started small, but kept growing until eventually it was all-consuming. Most of my water cooler conversations with colleagues started with me saying some variation of “why doesn’t someone just build…?”
I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, or how I wanted to do it; all I knew was that I had a strong dissatisfaction with the status quo and something needed to change.
So, I took the jump, learned how to code, and started Ivo.
Over the last few years, I've had the privilege of meeting over a thousand legal professionals. Lawyers have a reputation for being tech-averse, but in my experience, lawyers are more desperate for technology solutions to improve their lives than any other group of people that I know of.
We shouldn't confuse the average legal professional's carefulness with technology solutions with a lack of desire for them. Legal professionals have limited patience for products that don't respect their time and just work — but we've seen first hand that if they do, users will respond with sincere appreciation.
When large language models entered the public eye through ChatGPT, many lawyers were rightfully skeptical. Our small team has worked tirelessly to stay close to our users and earn their trust over and over again.
For example, take this quote from Quora’s Adrie Christiansen:
Or this quote from Formlabs’ Erica Jutras:
And it’s working! Take David Torchetti at Geotab, who says that he has saved an average of 45 minutes of review time per contract, a 75% efficiency gain.
Of course, we're just getting started — the vast stretch of our journey is still ahead of us. For now, we're at the very frontier of an exciting new platform shift that will permanently change the legal profession, forever and for the better.
Thank you to Fika Ventures and Uncork Capital for joining us as lead investors in this round of funding, and to the several new investors who have joined our cap table. And a special thank you in particular to our existing investors Daniel Gross, GD1, and Phase One Ventures for supporting us once again.