Summize: SaaS Lessons on Narrowing Your Target Market – with Tom Dunlop [433]

This is a machine-generated transcript.

[00:00:00] Omer: Tom, welcome to the show.

[00:00:01] Tom: Thank you for having me.

[00:00:03] Omer: My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[00:00:08] Tom: I'd say rather than a quote as such, there's certainly a mindset that they kind of, well, how they influenced something micro career and it's very sporting focused.

It was from Roger Federer doing this kind of commencement speech at Dartmouth. And he really resonates with me. I've got a sporting background, but he talked about. Gonna be the number in the world winning 80% of his matches. But he actually only ever won 54% of the points that he played. And something really resonates really about that statement, which was that, and his point was, Kenny, you every point was the most important thing in the world at the moment in time.

But when you know the loss ratio of points, he could kind of easily put them behind him and move on. Whether it was, you know, the ultimate backhand smash that, you know, won the, the Wimbledon Championship. So whether he, he lost the point, he treated them the same way and moved onto to the next. And I think I've adopted a lot of that mentality.

I think with scaling a business, if I'm honest, where, you know, I expect mistakes. I expect bumps, I expect things to go wrong, we deal with them and then we just move on. We go to the next. And I think it's a really powerful mindset that, you know, definitely influenced me quite a lot after I heard it.

[00:01:12] Omer: Love that.

I, I, I had no idea that 54% could make you one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

[00:01:22] Tom: It's, it's, it's a crazy start, isn't it? But it's a, it's a powerful concept when you I guess apply it to any part of life, really.

[00:01:28] Omer: Yeah. So tell us about ize. What does the product do? Who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[00:01:35] Tom: I. Yeah, so I, I, I guess I'll start with it. My, my statement about contracts being kind of the ultimate system of record and I start with that because most people can resonate with contracts. They'll deal with 'em in day-to-day lives. They set out, you know, who you're contracting with, why your contracting, how you get paid, for example.

What the obligations are. They, they're, they're kind of the, the foundational I guess description of what, what the relationship actually means in any business transaction. I guess most people resonate with the problem that, you know, it's very hard to create them, review them extremely manual, inefficient processes, but also due to the importance they're crafted by, you know, legal experts that have their own language to a certain extent.

And certainly once signed, most people lock them away and they're inaccessible. No one really understands what's in them. So really, with what Summize does is we focus initially on creating, you know, summaries of signed contracts, but very much today we're kind of a full end to end CLM, which means we help companies create contracts, review them, and manage them.

I think the big thing that we, I did very differently is we also understood that the power of contract, or I guess contracts permeate an entire organization, so sales teams interact with them, marketing teams, legal so we deliberately built our product to kind of be embedded in the tools that people use every day.

So you kind of get the power of CLM, but you get very much get them within Teams and Slack and Outlook, Gmail, Salesforce. So no one really has to go to samaya.com. And that's definitely the, the, the big ethos that we've had as a product development and what makes us kind of very different.

[00:03:11] Omer: Yeah, that's great.

I mean for me personally, I find it easier to understand code then looking at a contract and making sense of what it actually means, which, which says something. And I don't, I don't blame you, me too sometimes as well. Yeah. Give us a sense of the size of the business where, where you, in terms of revenue, customers, size of team.

[00:03:29] Tom: So we're kind of late 7-figure ARR variously, an 8-figure ARR, and kind of those typical Series B, I guess, metrics. So we've been growing more than a hundred percent year in year since inception. Kind of dual headquarters across Manchester and Boston. Hence think British accent. But in terms of customers, we kind of focus typically large, mid-market, small enterprise people like Revolut, Rothschild, Miami Heat, Matillion, SeatGeek, kind of very cross vertical, but generally businesses with probably at least one in-house lawyer that obviously deal with contracts on a day-to-day basis.

[00:04:00] Omer: And I think Crunchbase tells me you've raised about 5 million pounds, which is little more in dollars.

[00:04:05] Tom: Yes, yes.

Yeah. Agree. It depends on the conversion rate of the data is there. But yeah, , I think in total we're probably closest to the kind of $10 million mark in terms of raise the date.

[00:04:12] Omer: Okay, great. So let's let's, let's talk about where this all started. Like where, where did the idea come from?

[00:04:21] Tom: So my background is a lawyer by trade.

So I was a, you know, when I qualified as a lawyer, I went in-house pretty early on. So I was their kind of in-house lawyer for, for tech businesses actually. So I worked with scaling software businesses and generally was quite small legal departments and was the general counsel or legal director of those businesses.

And one in particular got purchase, got boughts as part of a transaction. And I was the unfortunate person that I guess had to manually review about 500 contracts which was pretty soul destroying. Yeah. Many a long day doing that. And then I guess the iron was, once I did it, I. I created an Excel spreadsheet and kind of looked to the answers and thought, hang on a minute.

I don't really understand what I mean, you know, like a hundred contracts above. I said, yes. This one I said, you know what the clause said, and they're not consistent. And then probably the, the nail in the coffin really was the the CFO at the time turned around and, and asked me to basically do, add an additional clause.

They said, oh, it'd be really good while you're doing that, if you could just look at this as well. But little, little did he know I'd already done the project, so I then had to go back and almost do another 500 contracts manually reviewing them and reading through these locked PDFs. So the idea, I, I kinda, my co-founder was a, a senior software engineer at the time, and I basically went over probably a very broken man and very upset, kind of saying, you know, this is what I need to achieve.

Surely we can automate this in, create, you know, instant summaries. And that was kind of the, the catalyst, the idea,

[00:05:44] Omer: I, I, I think if, if nothing else that was enough pain. From the sounds of it to motivate you to, to find a solution. This wasn't, this doesn't sound like scratching an itch. It sounds like much, much bigger injury than that.

[00:05:57] Tom: Yes. This was a wound, no, I think it was. But it's an interesting one. I think at the time, I've always been one of those people that, that wrote down in a, you know, a little book, business ideas. And the irony was this was, this was on the book, but yet I, I almost, because it was my pain, you almost feel as though it's insignificant.

You kind of, maybe you think of growing your business, which is much more to the masses, I'd say. But I, I think in retrospect, you soon realize that actually if you've suffered that pain or you know you've had that wound you've got much higher chance of success. 'cause you, you are motivated to fix it.

So, yes, definitely felt the pain.

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Initially when you had that conversation, I, I'm assuming it was about, look, can, is there a way to automate this to help me do the job or do my job here? At what point and how did this become an idea for a business that the two of you are gonna go and so, well,

[00:07:25] Tom: I think at the time, if I'm honest, I was, I was pretty motivated to, you know, see, see if this could be a 'cause.

I think I was always a bit kind of that mindset of I'd worked in these scale up software companies, you know, you get inspired by the founders. I think everyone thinks they're a mini entrepreneur in that environment. And I think I was sat there thinking there's nothing on the market. You know, I know that other people have this pain and I know the solution and I can, you know, if we can make this into a, some kind of automated product, then we could probably sell this to a lot of people.

So I think it was, it was always the intention, but then you know, I guess flipping that into actually becoming a, a, a business the, the catalyst for us was, you know, and I, I guess I knew we needed to do a load of development work. I could prove out the concept by going to my network and saying, look.

You know, a load of general counsels or lawyers, this is what it does, and show them a really, really rough, you know, Dave won't mind me saying that you know, a really, really rough prototype that was you know, just showed a PDF going in and a summary popping out the other side. But got people to say, yes, you know, this looks really interesting and, you know, I, I would pay for that.

We did a few POCs and, and at that point I kind of went for some prese funding to say, look. We, we validated the concepts. I've got the, you know, the expertise. I need this amount of money to get developers to essentially build out that kind of MVP really to go and sell it. And that was obviously the turning point for me where you know, we actually committed to the business, we created the products, and then our next job was to try and sell it.

But that was the when, when we flipped and I stopped hearing being a lawyer.

[00:08:52] Omer: How much did you raise on, on the seed round?

[00:08:55] Tom: So I'd say we, we did a pre-seed round about 250,000 pounds. So you know, again, conversion rate, few hundred thousand dollars, initially.

[00:09:04] Omer: And did you spend most of that money on, on development of the product?

[00:09:08] Tom: Yeah, pretty much exclusively on the, on the development. We, we did have some on the first couple of salespeople that we tried. I mean, we, we actually hired them three weeks before the covid lockdown, so that was an interesting time to, you know, hire an outbound sales team. But we, we, we did that with the, the kind of rest of the money.

And then very much we were trying to get to a milestone where we almost pre-agreed with the investors that, you know, look, if we can validate this and sell this to this scale, will you put more money in? And, and that was kind of what we're working towards.

[00:09:36] Omer: How long did it take to get a working product or an MVP that you could get in front of those potential customers?

And what did it do? So you described that prototype as basically, you know, put a PDF in, get a summary on the other end. How far did the MVP go next?

[00:09:54] Tom: I'd say it, it didn't go much further than that, so functionality just looked a lot nicer., I think we we actually actually, you know, created a UI and a, and a web application for you to do it without you know, us having to hold your hand and, and kind of do it using, almost like it was like a code that would pop out on the very rough version, whereas we kind of overlaid that UI and it's obviously made it a bit more foolproof.

And it was probably about six months really of developing the products to, to a point where, you know, even, even basic things like using permissions and a folder structure, you could actually hold them in afterwards. That you know, probably the initial prototype didn't have, 'cause it just proved the concepts, but there's all these things that came out that when you actually got someone to tested and use it, they'd ask a very simple question.

Well, it would be simple to them, but then you're like, ah, yeah, we, we probably should have, you know, thought of that at the time. So there's a bit of iterative, kind of going back and forth, but I'd say about six months to get something which was, you know, sellable and we could actually go to market with.

[00:10:48] Omer: So you did you, you did the right things in terms of going out and talking to potential customers, showing them at least a prototype and getting at least some positive signals that people were, were interested. One of the things that often happens is that founders go out and have those conversations.

People say nice things about this prototype. They go away and build something, and then they say it's ready. You know, and then, and then there's crickets, right? Or people ghost you. And, and what, what was your experience when the product was ready and you, you were like, okay, there's something that you can actually pay for now.

[00:11:23] Tom: Yeah, it was it's a really interesting dynamic because obviously I had a, a great network to start with because, you know, I felt the pain. I was a lawyer, I was in, in, in the industry, and I was the customer as well as, you know, the vendor in some ways. . So I, I could get a number of people to test and be the, be the kind of Guinea pigs.

But it was an interesting dynamic to go back to those people and say, right now you need to pay for it. And like you say, there was a number that said, you know, we went, went quiet and, you know, difficult time. And bear in mind we did this at the point of covid. So it was very much kind of, you know, it's a good excuse, you know, but you could argue for a lot of people to say, well, you know, there is a global pandemic, so probably not gonna pay for this right now.

But what that also did I guess this was the, the beauty of the product to some extent, and it being quite general, was all of a sudden there was a need for people to understand, you know, there was the typical fourth majeure clause. People were, were cared about when covid happened, or, you know, what happens in the scenario.

Of of this, do any contracts cater for this scenario? So we could kind of latch onto that and we found that there were certain verticals, which was actually the better first customers that we found where they suffered that pain. So, you know, catering businesses like they were overnight, they lost all their business.

So rather than target software companies, for example, that we knew would . Prosper and, you know, they, they're not necessarily that affected. We had to kind of look and at the industries that were essentially gonna lose a big portion of revenue overnight. And, and we went after them and as a initial target market actually, that, that, that did work really well.

And it was kind of a really, really good, actually arms length contract to secure rather than just my network that, that were not necessarily as forthcoming with with, with paying for it.

[00:13:08] Omer: We always talk about build a painkiller, not a vitamin. And it sounds like you found the people who definitely had severe pain from this.

Was there any I I, I could, I could imagine like if you, if you're in, in a catering business and you are, you, you look like, you know, something overnight. 90, 90% of your businesses looks like it might disappear or it has. You're probably not inclined to start going and investing in a whole bunch of new stuff.

So you, you definitely latched onto the right pain but what was the process of selling like?

[00:13:39] Tom: This was the interesting kind of, I mean, I obviously had a unique insight into the, the problem, but being a lawyer, I, I kind of, because source of preempts what they would have in their contracts, which obviously was a huge help in the early days that and a unique insight.

So we generally found that catering businesses or businesses that have events or, or elements like that have a number of cancellation provisions, have certain things that say, you know, you will still be paid money in these events and you won't in these scenarios. And it's actually the definition of what those things are.

That's the, the really important bit. So we had a bit of insight to, to kind of understand it's a huge pain, but actually that we know that a lot of them in the contracts will have remedies. The problem is to get to those remedies would've cost the fortune manually in time, or it would've been outside council spend and to law firms who would, you know, do it on their behalf, but, you know, charge a disproportionate amount where you know, you're not solving the problem.

So there was that kind of unique space that we, we, we found in, in, in those first few months really that we honed in on. And, and we did try the law firm route as well. You know, I would say that we . It, it sounds like we were really focused on and know, I really defined ICP from day one. I'd say we, we did try and sell it to everyone.

I'd say that the, the, the, the most traction now when you look back and, and everything's great in hindsight, is the, when we focused on a, on a, on a particular Paine, a particular type of business they were great early customers and I almost in in those days, wish we'd almost repeated that a lot more than think let's still you know, go after this, this random vertical over here, or let's still try and push this because they've said they like the product. And we did that a lot. But, but that was a great first 10 customers tactic.

[00:15:19] Omer: You and I were talking earlier, outbound has been the, the biggest growth of vehicle to help you to get to seven figures and, and beyond.

You built out a sales team and are having, you know, a lot of success with that in terms of, you know, with the business today, but in the early days, some of those things that you just talked about in terms of not having super, you know, being super clear about the ICP and going after a bunch of different verticals and things like that.

All of that was going on right in the early days and, and outbound didn't work as well as it, it is now. Right. Can you just talk about the, the sort of the process you went through and some of the challenges you were dealing with when you started?

[00:15:55] Tom: Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those where now.

You know, you look back at the, the why you would do one go to market motion over the other. I think the, the outbound model is obviously very good for a very targeted, you know, almost the individual within an organization with a very prescribed message that you can kind of craft to that person. And, you know, people describe it as spear phishing versus casting a net.

And I think that that's a, a good analogy. And I think when we started the out of our motion. We took the benefits of the control, but we, we just cast a net. We were kind of like, you know, I, this is, I, I've never, I, I don't have sales experience. I'd never let a, you know, sales team, and I think it was one of those where.

We just said, look, every lawyer in the world could use this product, so just yeah, go and go and sell it to them. And then it was very much kind of, whether it's a, you know, a law firm and they, the commercial team and they'll have this use case versus just any in-house lawyer and, and you could tell 'cause a few of our.

Like opportunities that we were gonna getting quite excited about, might have been from, you know, the, the extreme end. You know, a huge conglomerate that was in a telecoms industry that expressed an interest versus an SME that had 20 people in the advertising industry. Or, you know, something, something that you, that you would never draw a line of comparison of that they both need the same tool, but they both showed interest in the concept.

And I think we just wasted a lot of time reacting to interest, and we call them happy years, where basically someone says, that looks really cool. Like and we were just, you know, particularly as the founder, you, it is a compliment, right? This, this idea that you've had, you've probably harbored for a while and not told anyone about.

It's kind of a super secretive. And then you show it to people and they're like, this is, this is a really good idea. And you kind of wanna keep having those conversations. It is almost like a dopamine hit that you, you get. So we we definitely did that for a long time. And I think it was only when really we started to see that.

That wasn't just conversations, actually this was turning into product requests. It was turning into whole different kind of ROI conversations. The scripts that we had or the things we were trying to standardize just couldn't be standardized. 'cause there were two completely different cells that we really realized that we have to focus a bit more now and, and at the start it was just.

Do we sell to law firms or do we sell to in-house legal teams? That was the first decision. And then obviously since then we've gone, you know, a lot more specific down verticals and geos and, and everything else. But I think it was that, that was the initial problem we had.

[00:18:18] Omer: How you said, we did this for a long time.

How long was a long time before you, you had that realization?

[00:18:23] Tom: I think it was at least 12 to 18 months, I think before we really became quite . You know, quite focused on, on particular verticals or even in-house. And I think that was because we were still getting interest and we did do some deals. So it's almost hard when you're getting an element of validation.

Down one of your theories that, wait, it didn't work. Well, we did close some deals. So then you're still kind of tempted. 'cause it's like the age old thing with you know, with salespeople that have pipeline and it's the hope factor. You kind of, you're hanging onto it thinking like, yes, I know we shouldn't do that.

And then Logic says we shouldn't do it. But we did just close a deal over there. They did, they did just sign a contract with us. So should we not just do a little bit more of it? Just see, and, and I think we held onto that. For probably too long. Well, yeah, definitely too long in retrospect, but, but it's tempting, it's hard to fall into that trap or easy to fall into that trap.

[00:19:14] Omer: Totally. The, you talked about the, the, the personas, the the law firm lawyer, the in-house legal counsel. You decided you were gonna make a decision. Who did you pick and, and what happened next?

[00:19:26] Tom: Yeah, we we initially leaned into the the in-house legal market and I think again, we were relatively broad with that.

We didn't necessarily look at size of business and definitely influenced by. My background, you know, I was an in-house lawyer, so I just found that the conversations I was having with those potential prospects were I could resonate so much more with their day-to-day life. We could build a use case around it.

It was almost a cheat code that we had that I could jump on a call and say, I. I know exactly what you do, you say today and this is exactly how it helps. So it, it was almost an obvious decision, you know, again, it should have been. But we, we honed in there. We, we focused in the UK to start with just 'cause that was where we were, you know, we were founded.

We tried to try to hone that in, but we were very much cross vertical. And I, I don't regret necessarily, I. Doing that, I think we needed to understand where we play. So we had to try and sell it to a number of different you know, size businesses. Where does it resonate? Is it business divisions within a bigger company?

Is it this size? That size? How many lawyers need to have, there was a number of I guess, tests that we had to run, right? And we, we probably didn't iterate quick enough. We were almost flattered by the fact that we could sell to all these and just continued that strategy rather than necessarily saying, well, actually

This was a really quick deal. It was a better value deal, and they were really good on implementation. So, you know, they, they used the product much quicker. Adoption was better. Let's just really focus in, I think we were, we tested for a while and again, I keep on saying we did things for a while, but we, we definitely kind of kept up numerous verticals. And then I think what we ended up doing, and this is probably because of the better sales people we brought in, would naturally say, well, hang on a minute. The, I can earn more commission if I sell quicker and this particular area I'm gonna focus on. And that kind of took the company that direction a little bit more than maybe what we're doing at the start.

[00:21:09] Omer: Okay, great. So you picked the, the persona and then eventually, was there like one vertical or, or a couple of verticals that you said, this is where we're gonna focus our energy on.

[00:21:19] Tom: Yeah, there's a couple of verticals and I think what we did, which was quite unique about the products, was, and it comes back to your point before about, you know, the, the, I guess the painkiller and where wherever you focus, we had a different story for growth based businesses, which were all about, you know, hurdles to growth and procurement or the contract function would slow down deals.

So all of our messaging to software companies or high growth businesses was very much focused around how we can remove those hurdles, particularly pre signature. But then we also had the use case of the companies that had very operational larger contracts that they almost live in the signed contracts.

The barrier is they just don't know how to access them. 'cause they're huge operating contracts. So it was more post signature summarization, understand your obligations, that kind of thing that we could sell to that market. So the verticals we picked were very much aligned to one of those two use cases.

And then we just kind of align the salespeople to, to those verticals and really push those messages, which were a lot more specific than, you know, we can help you review contracts or something like that, which was a very generic message and didn't necessarily land the pain as quick as, as, as focusing on the verticals.

[00:22:24] Omer: Yeah, and this, this initial lack of focus of not having a, a clear ICP and a target market or vertical. It wasn't just causing sales problems, it was also causing problems with figuring out what product to build as well. From what you were telling me, you were getting all kind of random requests of where you could potentially end up taking in this product.

[00:22:50] Tom: Yeah. It's an, it's an interesting dilemma that I think when you're starting a business and growing it, initially, you don't realize the impacts, and I like finding your ICP early has because the other advice that you get when you are, you know, building a business is listen to your customer, right? I mean, it's always, you know, ask your customers as many questions as you can and understand what's important and help them, you know, or let them help you build the products.

And, and this was quite a good, I guess, experiment that we went through really, because we, we targeted two very, very different types of customer, you know, a a, a kind of siloed law firm that was a particular department that basically had billable hours they needed to hit. And so that was efficiency, really A big motivation.

Pro, probably not versus an in-house legal team that. Cared about what sales thoughts of legal and how their process integrated with the sales function. And they were, they were just very, very different in terms of what they saw as a benefit from the product and, and ultimately the, the roadmap that they would want.

You know, so we're getting a lot of requests about project management and how we can manage clients. Can we create a two way portal where we interact with clients, you know, in, in the products versus can we have a calendar built in because we need to manage termination dates and can sales access this and can you plug into Salesforce and.

All these different requests were coming in and you know, if you're not careful, you can get really drawn into design a products for this feedback and you're going down a certain route without really knowing whether that is the ICP that you should be chasing, you know, you, you're kind of committing before you really know.

And we, we definitely almost fell into that trap. But I think it was quite good to have those two different, almost streams running. So we actually could consciously say, oh, hang on a minute here, we're not gonna be able to develop a product unless we focus. And it kind of forced our hand to focus the ICP because there was just so different in terms of the requests.

[00:24:38] Omer: You know, we, we hear a lot about PLG, product led growth and all the goodness that comes with that. That was something that you guys also decided that you were gonna invest in. What was the sort of the general like driver? What, what pushed you in that direction?

[00:24:54] Tom: So I think we, when we looked at the market initially and we were kind of going to, to with our story and we got feedback on the products.

And it's probably 'cause we were new products as well. The other products we were up against, we were slightly more legacy, probably a bit more clunky. You know, there was a, a heavy implementation and that was almost a, you know, what we'd hear back when we talked about that was our kind of pitch really.

It's a, it's a quick and easy tool, you know, get up and running really quickly and I. I think when we were thinking about that internally and about the sales motion, and obviously at the time 'cause product like growth went for a real growth of its own. You know, there was a, there's a real movement in the SaaS industry a couple of years ago where almost like product like growth became the, the, the really cool go to market strategy.

And I think we, we were kind of, someone's drinking our own. Cool. I thinking. Yeah. Well, we are, we are that company, right? Everyone tells us that we're easy to use, that we're quick to set up. And why don't we design, actually, why, why should I go to Market Motion be the same as, you know, those guys that have been more clunky, we should be slick.

You know, they go on the website, they enter some details automatically in the products and they can have a click around and then they, you know, should we do credit cards and can they pay in the credit card? And we, we went through this whole like design phase, I feel like I'm saying all the , all the mistakes we made of all these were, those were relatively reiterated quite quick, but I think we we definitely went down that route because that was, again, some feedback from customers was that was how they thought we were different.

And, and you know, again, looking back and when we really got customers to try and go through this route is pretty clear that there's very few pieces of software really. That you can just log into and just go, right. Great. You know, I'm, I know how to use it. It's optimized to me. And, you know, we're, we're talking about contract review.

You know, this is a relatively complex kind of piece of software that is trying to automate what a very highly skilled lawyer does on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, almost the naivety to think that the products could just get to a point where it can help you with that without any formal you know, speaking to us.

And, and, and I guess configuration was it was really not the right strategy. And we you know, again, probably led for it with about three to three to four months I'd say. We, we really pushed it. We didn't necessarily lose our USP at the time, which was we quick and easy, but we, we didn't, you know, push that to the go to market function and really, really grow the, the PLG strategy anymore.

And, and, and went back to that kind of more traditional software process.

[00:27:08] Omer: Did you start doing free trials as well? At some point?

[00:27:11] Tom: Yeah. Yeah. We did we did free trials. So we did do the whole process where they could sign up, have a free trial, and we didn't necessarily do pay on the site, but we did a kind of, and as the trial was counting down, there'd be an options to say, you know contact sales and it would spit up a chat or we could directly get in contact with them and, and try and do the cells.

So it was a, I had a they're very still quite a jarring experience, but they could get into the products on a, on a free trial very quickly, and we would publish our pricing on the website. You know, we very much went down that route of you know, PLG quickly into the products and, and quickly get the money from them and scale that way.

But then stops it after a while.

[00:27:48] Omer: Takeaway. PLG is great, but not right for everyone. Right?

[00:27:51] Tom: Yes, exactly. I'd definitely say that's the the takeaway.

[00:27:54] Omer: So beyond outbound in terms of growth you, you, you're doing more inbound today and as you were telling me earlier, you have less dependence on outbound now, as you know, your, your inbound engine is, is kind of, you know, becoming bigger.

Events are one, one way that you, you're finding customers. Talk to me about how you, you started the, just getting into events and what was the, the initial experience like of you know, doing event marketing?

[00:28:23] Tom: Yeah. Events are I kind of been an an interesting channel for us. I think we've, we've seen that you've seen the kind of good and bad sides a bit when we, when we first started.

Again, it comes back to that. Slight naivety, but almost when you are launching a product into the market, the more that you hear positive feedback or the more people that see it, you almost wanna show the world this product that you've created. And we very much, you know, you go into an event and you've got, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people walking past your stand.

You know, they're, they're, they're coming to us, they're to us, they're asking questions about our products, and we would show them and they'd have really, really positive reactions and it was, it was a huge, almost like you know, vanity pray for us where . We, we, we, we got really excited about any conversation we had where they'd express a bit of interest.

So our outbound motion was very much, you know, we'd ring people and if they picked up, we could have a conversation and the, the, you know, the metrics meant that we'd have fewer conversations obviously, than dials, whereas you're in an event and everyone is having a conversation. It's quite overwhelming in terms of the, the interest.

But we didn't really pay attention to, I guess, how we worked that conference. You know, we didn't necessarily think about where we were positioned in the actual conference hall itself, we didn't, did we really care about, you know, does this event organizer allow you to get access to the data? You know who's going, even if it's at name and company level, and can we understand if this is our ICP or not?

And do we have access rights to be able to contact people in advance? And do they even facilitate communication on an app, for example, during the event that we could utilize. And a number of these strategies just weren't clear to us at the time. It was more about in the events at the time, how many people can we speak to and, and that they just didn't provide an ROI, I think what we learned was, particularly as we started to launch in the US a couple of years ago we thought events were a great way to kind of get our name out there and get a lot of people to see our brand. And it was but actually the, the dual effects of that was we managed them much better.

We got the lists, we were able to contact people in advance. We could set up meetings actually ahead of the event. There were a great talking point, so, . Almost the biggest value actually happened pre-event. And then a follow up on the, the kind of the, I guess the sequence we did and the, the calls we did afterwards and were, were really what made those really big ROI events for us now.

So we, we, we only go to certain trade shows or events that tick all those boxes and then we work them really hard to the point where w was probably our worst. ROI, is now probably one of our best ROI activities that we do. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's been really kind of flipped on its head.

[00:30:51] Omer: Yeah. I, I've, I've, I've heard of a number of founders saying, you know, they've, they've invested in events and they, get a lot of excitement when they stop people and they demo the product and they, wow, this is great. And but after the event, when they try to follow up, it's like, you know, no response. Nothing leads to nothing. And, and I think in many ways, first of all, like you just described, you, you need to have a strategy on how you're gonna run those events and what you do before the event.

Is just as important as what you do after in terms of follow up and the bit in the middle that we all get excited about is kind of, you know, probably the least significant piece that just kind of holds everything together. But it's it's you mentioned the, the US market that you went into a couple of years ago.

I'm curious, like you, you, you got to the point where you, you're selling to customers in the UK, presumably Europe and, you know, you, you kind of figured things out, how to sell this thing, the messaging, the scripts, all of that stuff. When you went to the us how, how easy or hard was it? What were, what was, you know, one of the, the, the biggest challenges or insights that you had of, of going in there?

Like often I talk to founders who are outside of the US and saying, I wanna break into the US market. Not sure how to do that. What, what's, what was the one insider takeaway for you from that experience?

[00:32:06] Tom: And I think the first thing is, is, is exactly that they're very different markets. And I think you have to have an understanding of that and not think that you can just replicate, just because it works in the UK or in Europe or in, you know, Australia or whatever it might be.

It, it doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work in, in the states. And I think what we found was and this is probably a symptom of, there was a lot of funding into CLM or contract management. Solutions around this time. And all those dollars almost went on educating the market really about what a CLM is.

And there was a number of players that kind of pre-educated the market before we got there, you could argue which is good for us. So, and, and that happens a lot in general set. You know, the, the American market is where everyone wants to break into, and I think. The educational dollars are spent before any of the markets.

And what that really means is that, you know, when we landed in the US I mean we had a strong USP and differentiator. And I think though in the evening today in, in the UK and Europe, it's actually hard to get to a point where I guess prospects or people understand the differentiator if they don't even actually understand what the benefits CLM can bring to them is.

So we were kind of going to the US and saying we're ACL M. Like, yeah, I know what a CLM is, you know we've already got budget. We actually have a supplier. Why are different? As we were like, oh, right, okay. And kind of how you can imagine them kind of flicking through the scripts kind of thinking like, , what's our you know, let's go forward a few pages.

But then that message really landed and it was all about the fact that we embedded in, you know, people's existing tools and we're not on another platform. And they go, oh, great. Yeah, that immediately resonates. You know, we may not have had the adoption we thought we were going to get because we're trying to ask sales to adopt a new solution.

And they're pushing back, well, well, we solved that. So they were much more receptive to our differentiator, but you have to have a differentiator. Whereas in the UK and EMEA, . we've found that we're still educating people. We start off with, have you thought about ACL M? You know, do you think you can review contracts quicker?

Or you know, how do you currently do it today? And we help them build a business case. They don't necessarily, at that point understand the differences feature level between us and a competitor. So it's very hard to get that differentiation so that that's the one thing that we've learned that the GoTo markets are very different.

We have different scripts, we have different I guess campaigns. We target slightly different verticals as well. And we also don't assume that the go to market in motion in the UK is gonna be the same in the us. The US is much more educated, much more advanced. We get to know quicker , which is better in the us but we can definitely be we can also get a yes a lot quicker and we don't have to.

Do a more consultative sell. It's a lot more on the differential. So that, that was how we did it and there's a load of other things around, you know, physically how do we do it? Moving offices, who do we put here first? That maybe a bigger conversation, but I think we you know, we did, we did a number of things that, that, that we're well on that side as well.

[00:34:46] Omer: And your biggest differentiator is the fact that Summize is integrated into all these places that people are already working, whether it's. Microsoft Word or Slack or Teams.

[00:34:57] Tom: Exactly. Yeah. I think, I think the biggest like fundamentally, we don't really want people to go to ize.com ironically. We actually want 'em to get the benefits of ize, almost like, you know, the, the, the copilots.

They're coming out there, but you know, they can create a contract, submit for a review, understand what's going on. They can get all the intelligence of AI redlining or an assistance and all within . Exactly the, the tool that they have to, they currently use. So in, in one company we might be in, you know Gmail, slack, and Jira for example.

And different departments are actually using a different version of Summize, depending on what tool they use every day, whereas the alternative was go to, you know, software.com and log in and everything has to happen in, in that web application. And that was the jarring experience, particularly for a product that, you know, was very much designed to integrate or I guess interact with.

A number of departments, depending on the stage of the lifecycle. So it was, it was a very big, and it still is, you know, a very big differentiator today.

[00:35:54] Omer: Great. Well, on that note, let's move on to the lightning round. You ready?

[00:36:00] Tom: I'm ready. I'm ready.

[00:36:01] Omer: Okay. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:36:05] Tom: So, I think the first one I, I heard was more from Reid Hoffman that said, "Do things that don't scale". But I think when I heard that later, it was . Always at stage commensurate. And for me, that's been really important. 'cause I think people get carried away with what they hear about metrics and like what should be important to founders and focus.

But it's 100% dependent on where you are on the, on the stage. You know, zero to one, to one to 10, to to, to, to 10 to 25, whatever it might be. And, and where you should focus your energy, where you should be recording those efficiencies. And what kind of, I guess, stats matter depends completely on . The stage that you're at.

And that's a really, really important thing that I've internalized and apply on a daily basis. Is it, is it stage commensurate? Is what we're doing stage commensurate that keep repeating.

[00:36:49] Omer: Sweet. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:36:52] Tom: I think certainly as we're talking about the first 10 customers and kind of getting that goes to market flywheel going the, the best one I've read, which is quite known as Impossible to Inevitable. It was the Jason Lemkin one that was, was really, really good to get that initial flywheel going. It was kind of a step-by-step guide to kinda get your go-to market function going. And that, that's still been the most influential book probably on on our journey today.

[00:37:14] Omer: Great. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:37:20] Tom: I think a, a a kind of serial winner. It's a, it is a really weird, kind of personality traits to a certain extent where certainly with serial entrepreneurs, and we've got a number around the board table that people often ask, if you exit a business, would you do another one?

And why would you, if you've, you know, you've, you've exited. And I think that the, the number one thing that keeps coming back to is they just love to win. Like the feeling of winning is, is the number one motivator for a lot of the people that I guess found the business successfully and, and continue to go and go again, you have to, the, the drive to win has to out.

I guess has to be more than any of the other emotions you experience along the way, which is a lot . So I'd say winning is the number one kind of characteristic that most funders have.

[00:38:02] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:38:05] Tom: I'd say more habit. There's certainly more recently I have to book out times, goes to the gym.

There is a spa there. I regularly get. You know, told him I work that all I do is go to the spa. But I think it's more to do with me taking the time out and actually realizing that it's okay. You know, I don't have to be working 24 hours a day and never allowed to focus on me and genuinely the effects that it's had on my, you know, how I think about things, the, the future of the products taking me out the day to day, just to dedicate the time for that kind of fitness regime.

I know it sounds pretty basic, but actually, for me it's had huge, huge benefits for I guess clarity of thought and I guess my mental state as we've gone through this journey. So that, that's, that's still my number one I guess productivity habit rather than all.

[00:38:45] Omer: I mean, don't knock it right. I mean, Henry Ford used to spend all this time in nature and the outdoors.

Right? And that's . It worked for him.

[00:38:52] Tom: Well this is it. This is it. And you often, your mates feel guilty about it. I think you'll mates feel guilty. You can't, but you're not chain to your desk 24 hours a day. But it's been the opposite for me. I have to do it.

[00:39:01] Omer: Well what's the new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[00:39:05] Tom: I mean, I think about this all the time. I think one that's kind of stayed in the mind for a while is I think there's probably a need for some kind of social knowledge platform, if that's the right descriptive term for it. My basically kind of. Selected content that you ingest rather than just the noise that is out there on social media platforms.

You know, selected, trusted experts. If you could kind of harness that knowledge and, you know, ultimately have it as your own model or chat that you could interact with I think some kind of social knowledge platform would be a huge, valuable asset to a lot of people. You could record this, you could use this in future and chat with the get the advice and be able to use it day to day.

[00:39:39] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people dunno?

[00:39:44] Tom: So, I'm, I'm gonna use one that I think most people do know, but the last few employees we've hired claim ignorance to this. So I'm gonna pretend that this is an un, you know, not known. But my, I used to be a great British badminton player, so I used to be an athlete and going on to the Olympics and very much kind of on the Great Britain program and before becoming a lawyer, and then obviously starting the, the, the business. But that was you know, a big part of my life at one, at one stage.

[00:40:08] Omer: Yeah. I I came across that in the, the research and I was like, what? I'd like .

[00:40:11] Tom: Yes. Kind of a very different skillset. So you certainly, you don't see many of you necessarily go from athlete to lawyer. Is, is a, is one journey, but then lawyer to I guess founder is, is another one that I, I'd just like to do the, the complete opposites of what people might think I'm gonna do next.

[00:40:24] Omer: And, and now it all makes sense when people connect it back to the winning, the Roger Federer thing we started with at the beginning.

[00:40:32] Tom: Yes, yes. You, you'll see a theme.

[00:40:33] Omer: And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:40:37] Tom: I think . I'd say this almost like has to be my passion, is like, I've got three kids as well. So that's another story about skate business with with three kids. I'm on the way. But I think genuinely it forces me to switch off mentally spending time with my kids outside of work and actually genuinely spending time with them in, in the moment.

And more recently they're getting to an age where they're getting into activities. Now our eldest daughter is, plays football or soccer, sorry at a pretty pretty high standard. And, you know, I genuinely live for that. The weekends it's really, it's, it's, it's turned into a huge passion that I probably never thought it would, but but definitely just my kids, that what they're doing, their activities, it's a big part that I, I love.

[00:41:13] Omer: Love it.

Tom, it's been great. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me and, and chatting and, and kind of uncovering this, this journey. Hopefully we gave people listening, some, some inspiration, some insights, something actionable that they can go and apply from, from hearing your story, if people wanna learn more about Summize, they can go to summize.com and if folks wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:41:40] Tom: Probably LinkedIn. I'd say that I'm, I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, so yeah, connect some there and, it's the best way.

[00:41:46] Omer: We'll include a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But you know, Tom Dunlop is not gonna be too hard for people to find on LinkedIn.

[00:41:54] Tom: Hopefully not.

[00:41:55] Omer: Hopefully. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and I wish you and the team the best of success.

[00:42:01] Tom: Thank you, Omer. Thanks for having me.

[00:42:02] Omer: My pleasure. Cheers.