Startups require you to leave comfort. Before starting Doxly, Haley was a practicing attorney and partner at Ice Miller LP. She kept seeing the same pain points in administration, deal closings, tracking down signature pages, editing multiple docs quickly and at once, missing signatures from signature packets, etc. Haley decided to build a workspace in the cloud for deals as opposed to relying on manual check lists. This required her to leave her role as a partner at her law firm, which was a life long goal of hers.
Fundraising was easy. Doxly was able to raise $2.7mm without a product in September 2016. Investors (VC) could all relate to the pain point so the process was easier than expected; Doxly was oversubscribed. Doxly raised an additional $1mm in August 2018.
The acquirer was the right fit. The offers were strong, but the Litera offer also allowed the company to continue growing the product. They brought the entire team on board, let them stay in Indianapolis, and sell into Litera’s customer base of 1,000+ law firms. The transaction was announced in August 2019 and the deal closed in 10 days from signing of the LOI (the entire deal was done on Doxly of course).
Hire people built for startups. Everyone ever hired was highly skilled, but sometimes those skills don’t translate to smaller companies. Doxly had to make sure they hired people that were ok doing the big things while also being willing to take the trash out. For instance at times, Haley herself had to respond to support tickets.
Big thanks to Haley Altman for sharing her story and learnings with us.
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