hence, a Kigali and London-based startup that uses data and AI to match businesses with third-party legal service providers, is set to scale its precision matching engine after raising $1.8 million in seed funding from various institutions and investors . This brings the total amount raised for the startup to $2.6 million.
The startup, which was founded in 2020, uses data from multiple sources to match its client companies' internal legal teams with external legal service providers, giving it the ability to recommend attorneys based on the nature of the assignment, the location and cost considerations.
“Browsing through external options and figuring out who might be a good fit, given a company's needs, pricing, and all sorts of other factors, is really, really hard. And most of the solutions out there are sort of market solutions that really want a transaction to happen. But what if you don't need people to buy? What if you're just trying to help people understand what works for them? We specifically delved into that area and created a product that is helping people find the right attorneys; really a starting point for your needs,” says ek co-founder and CEO Steve Heitkamp.
The startup was validated after a successful pilot involving US-based investment firm Revantage and an insurance company in London. For its next stage of growth, it is targeting even larger corporations with bigger legal budgets.
"We're working with big companies because they're effectively an autonomous market, they've already worked with a lot of lawyers and law firms," said Heitkamp, who co-founded the startup with Sean West and Arun Shanmuganathan. The startup team operates primarily from Kigali, Rwanda, one of Africa's best-known tech hubs.
Heitkamp said that to ensure an accurate match, they had to integrate data (including qualitative data) from different places, including customer billing systems, to create recommender systems that help companies make decisions.
“Very limited information and data is used to make decisions about who to hire. And we felt that companies were missing out on leveraging data even from their own experiences. If a company spends $200 million a year, there's an opportunity to understand a lot of different things, like what works well and what doesn't," Heitkamp said.
Investors participating in the round include Daybreak Partners, Broad Creek Capital, a global private investment firm started by two former attorneys Matthew Ruesch and Michael W. Green, Daglar Cizmeci, and various investors.
“We plan to use the funds to grow our team, especially technical talent, with a little more spending on marketing. We already hired someone who has a marketing background and experience working with law firms,” Heitkamp said.
hence, is part of Palantir's first Foundry for Builders cohort, allowing them to "work with sensitive data in an accredited environment."
Daybreak Partners founder Nate Dalton said, “…there is finally a tool that enables clients to move from large-scale, mostly anecdotal decision making to empirical evidence-based decision making, with a continuous improvement after each interaction. These past two years have ushered in a period of incredible change in the way we work, and it's very exciting to see the team harness the talent in Kigali and the Palantir platform to begin executing on their vision to dramatically improve the efficiency of global professional services markets.
