YC - Matt Flashcards
How many users, how did you you acquire them?
We will have no users until we raise money to start our fund. We are unique in that we are in essence paying our customers, so we need LP funding first.
What do you know about these users that no one else knows?
They often do not bring meritorious cases to court because of exorbitant legal cost.
What is your distribution strategy?
Direct cold outreach and developing strong relationships with existing law firm partners.
What is your value proposition
We help platintiffs with small-size cases get justice by using technology to make funding their cases profitable.
How will you make money?
Patronus takes a percentage of the recovery amount. On the investor side, we charge carry and management fees like a hedge fund
Are you open to changing your idea?
We are always adjusting our approach based on new information, and would be happy to change if there’s a more compelling way to have a large scale impact on this industry.
How did your team meet?
We met on Angellist. We were the right combination in terms of our skillsets. But what I wasn’t expecting was for us to become such great friends. We all moved to NYC to work together over quarantine, and Andrew and I are actually living together now and he’s the best roommate I’ve had. And Josh practically lives at our place.
Why do you want to dedicate your life to working on this?
People don’t truly have access to justice with current lit fin - it’s too expensive. With technology, we have the possbility to make it affordable and accessible to everyone. That will create REAL access to justice.
Who needs what you’re making?
Young New York attorneys who are starting their own practices, and need money to fuel growth. Plaintiffs use it to afford lawsuits they couldn’t otherwise / free up their cash flow for core business activities
How do customers discover you?
1 will be through referral / recommendations from law firms we develop relationships with. This is the best channel based on conversations with brokers and funders.
Where do new users come from?
We will find new users through cold calling, warm introductions from our attorney relationships, litfin brokers, existing funders that pass along cases that are too small. We will also likely develop channels via targeted advertising and content marketing
What have you built? (Matt)
Taught myself how to code and built a prototype early on.
Tell me about your legal background
Worked alongside founding partner to lead one of the largest arbitrations at my firm at the time, second chaired the arbitration at trial, also helped clients recover $100Ms of dollars in claims. Worked on every stage of litigation, from pre-filing through post-judgement recovery
What other kinds of users could you go after once you get all these users using your software?
We would expand to other case types first, to test out how our models apply when agnostic of case type, and then plan to expand on to federal jurisdictions where case sizes are larger.
Why did you pick this idea to work on?
I’ve worked in litigation and have seen clients with deep pockets overwhelm clients with shallow pockets time and time again. We believe that everyone deserves access to justice, even when they don’t have a war chest. I also have an applied math background and believe that there are clear patterns in litigation that should be used to understand case outcomes.
What do you understand about your users?
Lawyers who take on smaller cases usually do not charge fees, and take 25% of case winnings. Lawyers who take on larger cases charge fees, and generally advise their clients not to pursue smaller cases because of reward to cost ratio is too small.
Tell us about your team
I have experience working in every stage of litigation and have helped clients recover hundreds of millions of dollars. Andrew built his own quantitative trading desk at one of the top trading firms in the country. Josh’s background in business operations is critical for us to source and manage thousands of cases.
Who is going to be your first paying customer?
A claimsholder who has a claim in the $100K to $1 million damages range (which is typically outside of the scope of most litfin).
What’s your go to market?
Our most successful avenue has been cold calling and building relationships with smaller legal practitioners. There are other avenues that we plan to try soon, such as search engine marketing.
Why would they switch to your solution from contingency solution?
Firstly, contingency fee attorneys don’t cover litigation costs, which can be hundreds of thousands if not more. Attorneys are risk averse, so it’s rare. Some still do, but limited into certain case types usually.
What do they like about this solution?
They do not have to put in any of their own money into a case, unless there is a favorable outcome. It is a risk free endeavor.
What is your growth like / traction?
We’re not ready to fund cases yet, but have had close to 250 customer conversations. As an anecdote, we’ve been upfront in telling attorneys that we are not ready to fund cases, yet even this past weekend we have three cases brought to us to fund by lawyers knowing we don’t have any money.
Why did your team get together?
Frankly, we just really care about fairness and justice. It also really helps that this is a really cool, cutting edge problem that could transform the lives of millions of people.
How are you understanding customer needs?
Each potential customer is contacted over the phone, so we are understanding customer needs through direct conversation. We also have done deep industry research, had numerous conversations with insiders in relevant data legaltechs, litigation attorneys, litfin brokers, and litigation funders.
What are you building?
Not everyone can afford expensive lawyers. We pay for legal fees in exchange for a percentage of what’s won in court. We use machine learning models to fund the cases that need and deserve it most.
