29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Summary of Feedback Received:

From fellow student Nick Campo: Overall, your venture concept looks pretty great and well thought out. I believe I mentioned this before, but your product seems very versatile in just about any business. So, would it be able to be applied to other non-law firm businesses (maybe financial management firms, consulting firms, etc.)? Also, I really like you "next steps". They are achievable goals with a reasonable time frame. Good job and keep it up!

The feedback I received was very positive and included only one suggestion: to consider using this software for other verticals like wealth management and consulting.  I think this could be a possibility and considered it when discussing what could be next for this offering.  I expanded the review with a few of my colleagues and again received very positive feedback.  They too were limited to a single suggestion which was to extend implementation to four weeks as two was too aggressive.  I also revised a few paragraphs to improve readability- highlighting key points.

Venture Concept No. 2

The product that I am offering is a comprehensive software solution for solo and small law offices that manages the firms’ marketing efforts, client intake, case management, document management, calendaring and finances.   

While there are many products on the market that address and manage one or more of the activities involved in running a law practice, none of them are comprehensive and none of them include all the aspects that my software will. 

Forces in the environment include increased customer capabilities to research, identify and valuate quality of lawyers in market place.  The market can be defined by business type and # of employees. Customers are satisfying this need today in a very fragmented and costly way, through multiple software applications that do not interface with one another.

The opportunity size is significant, there are over 60,000 practicing attorneys just in the state of Florida and twenty percent of those attorneys are the addressable market for my solution.  That is 12,000 attorneys that I can reach initially in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties.   If I could convert just 5% of them to my software solution, that would generate $4.8 million a year in perpetuity. 

Given the sizeable opportunity and rapid development of software solutions being developed, I don’t expect this opportunity to be open for long.  There are new entrants into the market every year, but none are the total solution that I am offering.  It may be for good reason that I will later find out during initial testing of the software.   

I am selling software as a service to attorneys focused on efficiently managing the firms’ marketing efforts, client intake, case management, document management, calendaring and finances.  Today attorneys use several independent applications to manage their portfolio of clients, billing, appointment scheduling and marketing.  Even though their needs can be met by alternatives, it comes with a lot of extra effort.  The stand-alone applications do not talk to one another and they constantly have to copy or transfer data to multiple programs- and this is the pain point I will leverage.  My solution will consolidate these applications and efficiently allow them to manage the lifecycle of each client and effectively maintain and grow their relationship with them.  

Imagine you send out marketing to attract a client with a discounted offer package, like a living will and health care surrogate bundle.  This client calls or goes online requesting an appointment.  Then you meet with them and you come to agreement to provide a service.  You need to collect their information and facilitate discovering their needs and wants- like where their assets will be distributed.  You send them an invoice to pay and you then complete the service.  You want to know how satisfied they were and want to collect a review to attract new clients.  Finally, you want to stay in touch and provide them with more solutions and stay top of mind, so they refer when others in their circle of influence have needs.   

Our software solution takes all the inputs and outputs of what I just described and automates and shares data across functions- marketing, client intake, questionnaire to collect needs/wants, billing to collect payment, legal form templates to produce documents and surveys to collect satisfaction.  All in a single location!

Given all of this exists in separate applications today, we plan to undercut the cumulative market price by 30% and offer this software as a service for just $500/month.  This pricing model of monthly payments is consistent with the market and once we successfully have a firm up and running, the switch over costs would be high and we will have longtime loyalty.

Venture Concept:

To attract new customers, we have undercut the cumulative costs of applications solving this need today.  We also provide free implementation given the lifetime value of our customers.  We estimate this will take two to four weeks of conversion and testing per customer. 

Given this comprehensive solution does not exist in the market today, there are no direct competitors.  However, Lexicata, Rocket Matter, Clio, Calendly, QuickBooks, Survey Monkey, Soci, and Zoho are all playing in a portion of this space today. 

Customer experience and support are the two biggest satisfaction drivers that we are focused on.  Business location, distribution and packaging are not important to our target customer.  As we grow in number of subscribers, we would maintain a variable model that uses offshore support to maximize our profits.  We would focus on our sales force and product development as our permanent staff and estimate having 10 employees to start.   

(1) Client Relationship Director
(3) full-time sales hunters
(1) sales closer 
(3) developers
(1) Office Manager 
(1) President 

Our most valuable resource will be customer focus.  Given my strengths and experience, I believe I am uniquely positioned to provide the best possible solution for our customers.  Having grown up in retail, I have learned the value of satisfaction and loyalty.  I also know how to distill and stay focused on critical drivers of both satisfaction and efficiency through process excellence. 

Next for our venture, I’d like to expand into larger firms and create multiple profiles for our software to accommodate different roles and business verticals.  I think larger firms and different verticals have a different set of needs and more resources than the sole proprietor running the business on her own.  

Ultimately, I’d like to see our solution commercialized.  It would be great to have most law offices and even other small businesses that operate under a similar business model using our software solution.  I would also like to establish a community of users that can share expertise and services across our platform.  I believe the power is in the community of users sharing expertise and coverage across the court systems.