Legal-tech startup Della used this 14-page pitch deck to raise $2.5 million in seed funding


Christopher Frerebeau, founder and CEO of Della

  • Della, a contract review startup, raised $2.5 million in seed funding.
  • The legal-tech startup uses AI to help lawyers more efficiently review complex documents.
  • Here’s the pitch deck it used to nab funding from investors.

Della’s seed round



Della


Contract review startup Della announced in March that it raised a $2.5 million seed round.

Founded in 2018, the London-based startup uses artificial intelligence to help lawyers review contracts faster.

“We consider contracts the key part of how businesses work, but they can be complicated for lawyers and companies,” the CEO and founder, Christophe Frerebeau, said. The company’s end goal is to make contracts easy for anyone to use. “We want a nonlegal professional to be able to get information about contracts from Della as if a lawyer would.”

Pragmatech Ventures, which has backed other AI startups like Propertymate and DeckRobot, participated in the seed round, along with other individual investors.

A focus on lawyers



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The manual and high-stakes nature of legal work makes lawyers a good target user base for Della, Frerebeau said.

High stakes



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“We still have the same contract review process as the 19th century — just using Microsoft Word instead of paper,” Frerebeau said. But legal documents have become increasingly complex, increasing the risk of liability or noncompliance.

SaaS agreements, for example, have gone from just two pages to several hundred pages now, according to Frerebeau.

The problems with manual document review



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Manual document review is time-consuming and inefficient: A typical task takes three to four hours for law firms, Frerebeau said.

Lawyers can save 75% of that time with Della, which helps lawyers review the same document in under an hour.

Market demand



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The startup wants to enable businesses to become less reliant on law firms for low-value tasks, and Frerebeau sees a large demand for those services.

It can cost companies thousands of dollars to retain lawyers. Della costs just $250 to $500 per user per month, according to Frerebeau.

Limitations of existing solutions



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Della differentiates itself from existing legal AI providers with its focus on more complex cases. For example, the startup helps construction companies review industry-specific contracts, which can often involve continuous updates for multiple documents.

Lawyers can spend several days reading those complex contracts, but Della’s scalable AI helps them do that in just a couple of hours, Frerebeau said.

Della’s mission



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“We want to help legal professionals better structure their processes,” Frerebeau told Insider.

The importance of data



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Frerebeau has a fintech background, which he said taught him “the more data you capture, the more value you can provide to the user.”

Della’s strategy is to capture and build upon the information that a less experienced lawyer would need and “move up the value chain” to ultimately provide what a partner would need to know.

Two-pronged use cases



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In addition to streamlining the document review process, Della also helps generate summary letters that explain the most important parts of that document, Frerebeau said.

Go-to-market strategy



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Twenty law firms and companies in various industries like construction and energy currently use Della, according to Frerebeau.

Introduction to road map



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Della’s strategy



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Della’s AI has an accuracy rate of 98 to 99% for simple questions like “what is the governing law in the contract?” Newer, more complex questions have a first-time accuracy rate of 60%, but the interface makes it easy for lawyers to input the correct answer so the AI can continue to learn, Frerebeau said.

The startup plans to use the $2.5 million in seed funding to continue building its AI technology.

The team



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It also plans to use the funding to grow its team from 14 people to around 20 by the end of the year, including hires in customer success and marketing.

Looking forward



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Della has quadrupled its recurring revenue from December 2021 to March 2022, Frerebeau said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if they raised more funding before the end of the year.

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