go all the way or don't start ~ Daniel Lord-Doyle

Hey Crew! 

Daniel Lord-Doyle started in telemarketing. Taught himself to code on YouTube. Built a laser hair removal e-commerce company during COVID by accident among many other things. And then co-founded Mary Technology, an AI legal tech startup that just opened offices in New York and San Francisco.

Half engineer, half salesperson. He thinks that combination is the whole game. And he has a lot to say about what it actually takes to build in one of the hardest industries to sell into.

We get into 👇: 

★ Teaching himself to code on YouTube after missing out on equity at his first company 

★ The laser hair removal e-commerce business that took off during COVID 

★ How Mary Technology went from a red button on a website to AI handling the biggest bottleneck in law 

★ Why legal tech is actually not that hard to sell into right now 

★ The BATNA mistake that nearly sank them 

★ New York, San Francisco, and why 550,000 US law firms was the only answer

Let's keep the crew together 🤝 

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Transcript

the teaser

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Fight a losing battle and not lose. That's basically what a startup is. I never thought I'd look back and go, wow, that telemarketing job was the best job I've ever had. I mentioned earlier, risk transfer. The concept of what you're really paying a law firm to do the majority of the time is just take on the risk. And so a law firm really lives and breathes on its reputation to do a really good job and not let people down. And so we've gone after the hardest, most difficult thing, which is the biggest bottleneck in law. And that's the big wave we're going after. And then if you're gonna do that, go all the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Legal tech is one of the hardest industries to sell into. In one sentence, why do lawyers resist new technology?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Because of a thing called risk transfer. They're not really being paid to do legal work, they're being paid to take on a massive risk.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

You started in telemarketing. What's one called calling principle that every founder should know?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Questions are the answers.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Okay. Okay. AI hallucinations in legal documents. How worried should law firms be about this?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

If they're expecting for the AI to produce an answer that they rely upon without verifying it, they should be terrified. Okay. I highly recommend they don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

You heard it first. You weren't there at the very start. But then when

⚡ how he joined and why he said yes

SPEAKER_01 1:17

did you come in and why did you say yes?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

So, no, I wasn't there at the very beginning. But Rowan and Harry, who are two of my fellow co-founders, Rowan faced the problem because he was a lawyer. And he was the person who wrote in that WhatsApp group, which was actually full of all of his other colleagues who were junior lawyers or paralegals. And I think the reason it didn't get much of a response was because AI was such a new thing at the time. We forget now, I think, uh, that transformers and the capability of AI just wasn't a real thing just a few years ago. Um, but ultimately Rowan could see it having a chance to solve some of the problems that he had. And the primary problem was that he very rarely got to practice law. The majority of his time was spent in administration, copying and pasting or like reviewing somebody else's work for spelling and things like that. And it was very, very administrative. He just happened to tell Harry, who is just this go-getter, and he's amazing at zero to one. And Harry put together a prototype, quick and dirty one, solving a slightly different problem than we're solving today. Ultimately, it was just a red button, single website, red button, it transcribed a meeting that you were in as long as the laptop was open and recording, and then helped you turn that into a legal document. What was compelling for me, having had experience building companies, I really knew that type of interest that they'd managed to get. They had like 20 firms who were like, oh my God, please show me more, tell me more. And I was at the time, I was actually sort of looking for something like this again. Um, I was actually just working for a software company uh called Virtually Human, uh, which is a uh blockchain gaming company. And I worked with Harry and Luke, my other fellow co-founder. When they showed me the challenge for that product was that although they put it together um and it worked really well for one person for a demo, it was never going to scale. And so I originally came on as the CTO.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Do you have a technical background?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yes. So that's maybe one of the things that I did work at a telemarketing company. Half of my career's been sales, and the other half of my career has been engineering.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Oh wow. Oh wow. Match made in heaven. Very rare combination.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

You know, things only really make sense when you look backwards. At the time, it really is just chaos. And I actually was part of a company called Grad Touch in the UK, which is now actually the largest graduate recruitment network over there, uh, under Unseen. But I came when there was very few employees there. I was the first sales hire, and uh I'd grown that company massively and had no equity. When obviously I left, uh, I didn't really gain anything other than experience from that, which was a huge thing for me. Not necessarily a problem. They didn't do anything wrong, but I just didn't even know equity existed. So when I moved to

💡 missed equity, learned to code on youtube

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Australia 10 years ago, I recognized that if I was going to be able to run a company and meaningfully, I needed to build it. So I had to learn engineering. So I actually went to uh study myself on YouTube initially and built an e-commerce company. And then after that, I went and did General Assembly, like three-month or six-month intensive, and I would just study from 5 a.m. till 11 p.m. And I've I figured if I do that for like six to nine months, I'll be where somebody should be after two, three years or something.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And I'm sure you were you said that you were a two times founder. What was the first company?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, so I mean, I've I've actually founded more than two companies. They're the ones that had any any level of success. Um, but I had an e-commerce company that was called Selfie Skin, um, which was just a laser hair removal handset, and we got very lucky during COVID.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

That's a very random thing to just dabble in.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Well, e-commerce is a very low barrier to entry, and ultimately I came up with a criteria of what a product needed to be, and then I found one and then started selling it uh by building a website. But really, I was doing it to learn. It just so happened to be a very good commercial success. But you've got to be in it if you're gonna have any success, right? And so we were just a bit lucky in in doing that. The another one that I suppose I've founded or suggest I've founded is Mary. So there's the two that I talk about. Um, but I've founded many others.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

What's the most rogue one you founded?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Or one that like I've got the worst idea was one for a fasting tea.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Ah, like those weight low weight loss. I'm not even sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Now you ask me. It was uh called Ayuno, which is after desayuno, which is Spanish. Again, no idea where that came from. But the concept was we were trying to sell to people who were trying to be without. It's not the best thing. I mean, the one thing I've probably learned over my time is if you're gonna start a business, a really good start is like selling something that people really want. That's probably a really good start. Like sell ice cream, don't sell them an education package about why they should eat ice cream.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yeah, start with a problem and then provide a solution to that. So you are obviously someone with a very entrepreneurial mindset and you've dabbled in lots of things. You have the rare combination of being able to sell things to people and also build them as well. And you've talked about it being a superpower of really building, bridging product and market. When did you realize that that was your unique edge?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I think that actually I had to come to a realization quickly that both of them really come under the same primary rule, which is we're selfish at a genetic level. Um, and if you're going to build something, build something that other people selfishly really want and need. If you're going to sell to somebody, sell to them not in the way that you want to, or a product that you think you want to build, but instead something they need. And so when you get to see that from both sides, I think that's really governed the way I both build technically and the way I sell. But that's like a the first principle for me.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

It's a good foundation to have.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, but it's a superpower, I suppose, because you often when you're an engineer, you want to just build really interesting things.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

You do.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

And when you're a salesperson, you sort of get to the point where interesting is good, but really when something has very high value for that specific person, it's the only time it matters. And so if you can marry those two, that's a good thing. But also building a a company nowadays, you need engineers.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

You do.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Um, I'm not particularly of the school of thought where like you can just build anything with AI now and you don't need engineers anymore. Um, I still think you need excellent engineers, frankly. And I think one of the challenges that I've met with many founders who they have, they don't really know what good looks like, either for for an engineering hire or the deadlines an engineer is giving. You know, so you need to be able to sell because it spans across everything investment, sales, bringing a team on board and getting them inspired, speaking, you know, absolutely everything is sales. But then if you don't have that technical capability, it's very difficult to build

⚖️ why legal tech isn't actually hard to sell

SPEAKER_00 8:22

a technical product because you can get taken advantage of, frankly.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Quite quickly, yes. Legal tech is notoriously hard. What surprised you the most when it comes to, I guess, selling to lawyers and approaching that whole ecosystem?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

That it's not that hard.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Oh okay. For you.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Well, I think actually there was two major changes that happened. I I think historically it's been really hard. I am not suggesting it's because of who we are either that made it easier. It's just there were two major things that happened. Number one, AI meant people needed to change their frame of mind. And Australia in particular has been very forward-thinking about actually taking on that innovation. Australia, I saw a report not long ago where it was 99% of lawyers of using AI. That's significantly higher, by the way, than places like the US. Um, that will change over time. Everybody will, of course. Uh but the second thing is that two demographic changes happened in Australia. It was the first time, like in the second year of our being alive, it was the first time that there were more women than men in law as lawyers, and the first time that there were more people under 40 than over 40. So you had these two things sort of occurring at the same time. Um, the demographic of lawyers was changing to a law uh a younger, more vibrant, uh, like innovative group, and AI was occurring at the same time. So I I I I'm not sure how much they played into it, but that's something I think about.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

For sure. What is Mary Use Technologies now? What do you do? You mentioned earlier that there have been a few pivots. I'd be keen to hear more about those pivots.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

There's been one key pivot uh that was at the very beginning, which was are we gonna just transcribe recordings and make them into documents? Quickly that became okay, now we can take transcriptions, but they want to combine them with other documents. And what it really became in the end was people wanted a chronology, which is one of the most foundational documents in law. It helps you go from here's all of the documents that are part of this legal matter. This is still now where the majority of time is taken up in a legal case. Something like 60 to 80% is just working through those documents in the document review. Now, obviously, that's a challenge for me and you if we want legal help, because actually most of our money and our spend is going to go towards time that might be more efficiently spent. And so we developed a very good chronology software initially. And what we really found was what we'd become very good at and what we were focused on was extracting facts. Now, what does that mean? I'm not a lawyer, again, I'm a software engineer and a salesperson. But what it really means is why it's significant is facts just aren't in the documents. So I don't know how deep you want me to go on this, but there's two types of law. There's one that is transactional. So that think mergers and acquisitions, think contract review, that sort of stuff. Think opening a business. You know, that's transactional. And often that's to do with the future. So you're going to set something up to happen in the future and you need to assess documents to do that. All of the documents involved in that, the majority of them, very ordered. So in a contract by proxy, everything needs to be defined. Wherever you mention another document, you sort of need to mention it in full and say what's expected in there. AI is so good at that. So good at understanding those documents that are ordered and organized. Whereas actually the documents in litigation, which is where Mary helps, we help dispute resolution and litigation firms. So think things like family law, with things like um, how do you work out who gets what from the family pool? Or think personal injury, somebody's been hurt at work and they need to actually collect all of their doctor's notes and evidence of what's happened to them and their job, uh, what's impacted their job. Um, you know, these are not in ordered contracts. They're in handwritten medical notes, they're in emails, they're in reports, they're in reports with handwriting on them. You know, it's all very difficult documents or Excel's and things like that. So we're very good at going through those documents and constructing the events and facts that have happened in those, and then make helping lawyers get go from the facts to an actual work product, such as, say, a letter of advice, which is the first thing you do as a lawyer. You go, okay, cool, I've looked through all of your documents. Here's what I recommend we do next. Well, that actually takes you reading through every single thing manually. And often in order to do that, you have to organize every document. So Mary really just replaces all of the manual administrative work from the moment a law firm receives all of the documents to the point where they can begin doing real legal work. So that's what Mary helps automate. The key thing that's probably not it's not just AI going through and doing that job, though, because actually I mentioned earlier risk transfer. The concept of what you're really paying a law firm to do the majority of the time is just take on the risk. And so a law firm really lives and breathes on its reputation to do a really good job and not let people down. And so they can't just put things into AI and trust the output. And so what Mary's gotten very good at is extracting those facts, helping a lawyer review all of them, at least the important ones, in a more thorough but still faster way than if they'd done it manually. That's basically what we do.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

So many questions popping to my mind. But what was the initial reaction from lawyers when you first came to market?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Magic. But I don't think the founders who are listening to this have the same, unfortunately,

🤖 what mary technology actually does

SPEAKER_00 13:46

have the same chance we did to shock and awe people with just what's possible with AI. I think the market's matured a lot. And actually people are asking different questions now. Originally, when we showed it to people, they were like, wow, that's crazy. Sign me up. 2023. Okay. Um so this is when AI had first come out. Most people hadn't used it or been using ChatGPT even. And uh, you know, one of the funny things that I sort of think about is there's probably groups of friends out there who don't use AI, and I'm envious of them in some ways, you know. Um, all around a kitchen table just having a normal conversation, whereas all I think about all the time is AI, I suppose. But I think nowadays you've got to have a better answer than just what can AI do. It's more like how can humans use what AI can do. Because with i especially in high value tasks like law, which is where there's a very good sort of return per token.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

No, that makes a lot of sense. If you've made it this far, we are basically friends. Watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe button, listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're streaming podcasts, hit the follow and like, and so that you can tune in for more next week. Something that's very important to me is really showing the realities of being a founder and operating a company. So on that note, what is one key mistake or misstep that happened early in the journey? And I guess how did you address it?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

I mean, founding and growing a company is a series of mistakes. But it's going from one mistake to the other without any loss of enthusiasm, which makes you a founder. And fundamentally you can see mistakes one way or the other, but what you're really after is uh a solid example of a mistake we've made. Oh, um well, we chose the wrong target markets to begin with. It's a fairly broad one, but we we effectively had to choose three or four or five, and we went with a whole heap, and we ended up having to actually just come straight back down to something that was super razor sharp, and that actually helped us survive. Um, I don't necessarily think if you went back now, we'd even view that as a real mistake.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

It's just part of the journey, it's just part of the journey.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, two of the things um the mistakes. Well, I wouldn't suggest that having four co-founders is a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Um but I want to give you something that that people listening might find helpful. In this journey, you're so often asked to tell the good story.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

That's the whole point.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah. I mean, one of our values is you know, iron sharpens iron, or more appropriately, like cockroach mentality. Like we in our journey so far, we've had so many major falls. And it's I think it's how you deal with those moments. Like at one point we were really hoping, you know, we we almost had a deal sort of organized and it fell through. And so I would say one of the mistakes we made is not having a batner. Do you know what a batten is?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

No.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

A best alternative to the negotiated agreement.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

And that's something you have internally. So don't put all your eggs in one basket. That's one mistake we made once was just put all our eggs in one basket on a deal. And we had to really resolve how we were gonna move from that. And it was at that moment where I actually became the CEO. So that's one thing. We've been blessed.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, that sounds like you've had a pretty good journey so far.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah. Which is really good. We've had we've really been very lucky with the people that we hire, but I also think that comes from I think that comes from my own sort of prejudice towards enthusiasm. That's one of the key motivators for a hire for me. It's very easy nowadays to get caught up in is my job going to be here in a year? You know? Whereas actually I think grit, determinism, uh like determination, intelligence, and enthusiasm are probably what we hire, and we've been very lucky with people. I'm sure I'm just trying to find a terrible mistake when you're gonna do it. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I think you've

🤝 four co-founders, disagree hard, commit

SPEAKER_01 17:51

hit on some really important threads there. So you have four co-founders. How do you make decisions when you disagree? And how do you operate as a as a quadruple?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

One of the key things that have kept us sort of in line and moving forward is this concept of like disagree hard in the room. But once you leave that room, you commit and you commit as if the thing that was decided was your idea. That's probably the main thing that um because we really, really don't anybody, and it's I think people coming into the business find it quite amusing. But I walk around the business saying to people, I might be wrong. Tell me when I'm wrong. Like you have to call out, and this is to people who've just joined the business in the most junior role. I don't think that title determines who should speak. I don't want the loudest person in the room to be the only voice that's heard. And so I really, really encourage like just a marketplace of ideas that are determined based on their actual value in comparison to who's most senior. I don't think that should hold any weight, particularly. I know that might change as we scale because I think problems sort of start to occur if you encourage that, but not if I have anything to say with it, say about it, because when we get into a room all four co-founders, it's not necessarily trying to prove. I think this comes also from having a founding team, is it's not about being right. It's actually what's right for the company. And you if it takes a long time, you spend a long time on it. If it's really important, if it's not that important, let that person have responsibility for it. So we we run a racy system. Have you heard of race? Yes. Yeah, so somebody is responsible for it, someone else is accountable. You can have consultants and influences. But if they want to go away and make a mistake, they can. And there everyone sort of has adopted that sort of stance where it's like, well, if that's your number and that's your responsibility, you can go away and make any decision you want within reason and budget. But if you make a mistake, you're gonna have to explain to us as well how we don't make that mistake again. But fundamentally it's on them.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

It's great that you have a very defined framework and way of working. What was the relationship like prior to Murray's technologies? Were you all friends? Did you know each other?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, so Harry, Luke, and I had all worked together. Um, but the dynamic is I'm an engineer and a salesperson, I suppose. Rowan is a lawyer, Harry is like a marketing and sales superstar, and Luke is a product superstar. So we had like engineering, sales, product, and law, which is sort of the perfect makeup for when you're trying to start a company like this. Yeah. But very early on in the journey as well, we brought on two founding engineers, Jesus and Lawrence, who are just the best engineers that I knew. And so we went all in straight away with a team of six, really. It's less that there's four, it's more that there's six.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Wow, wow, wow. Yeah. But you've obviously succeeded and really created a really good working environment. I would like to work at Meris Technologies.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Hey, who knows?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Maybe one day. You've moved very fast in two years from prototype to fuse to US expansion, which is very exciting. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

What have you sacrificed to move at that speed?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Everything. I mean, one of our values is go all the way. It's from a Charles Bukowski poem. Um, I mean, the key values presented in that poem is that isolation is the gift. You know, sometimes you're gonna go through a terrible time, but it's in I mean, maybe the best way to I heard this wonderful quote the other day from GK Chesterton that sort of encompasses what the poem is all about. It's like the one purely

🌊 fight a losing battle and don't lose

SPEAKER_00 21:32

divine thing, the thing that gets you closer to paradise, is to fight a losing battle and not lose. That's basically what a startup is. You're fighting a losing battle constantly. People have more resources than you, they have more people than you. Everybody who you speak to, the majority of them won't believe in you, including the people closest to you. And you have to sort of stick with that and be as smart as possible and be rational at the same time as being entirely irrational. Like startups are. Paradoxes. You're gonna do this huge thing with no resources. Like nobody else believes, but you believe entirely. And so at some point, people start congratulating you, you know, and saying, Well done. But actually, I think the the moment where you need that most is actually in the middle of it when you're going through the tough, tough moments. Um, and I'm sure many of your listeners, if they are going through startup journeys, they're witnessing that paradox as well. So go all the way, and that's one of our virtues, uh like our values. Go all the way. That's how that's how we've gotten through it. Go all the way.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

And obviously, you've hired very well to help really drive that as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

There's obviously the values help drive who we bring on. I mean, go all the way makes it sound like it's just about hours worked. It's really not. Um, again, you have to be quite smart about what you're going all the way on, right? So another one of our values is uh that run towards big waves. What happens when you run away from a big wave?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

It eventually smashes you again.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Smashes you in the back and you fall over. Whereas what happens if you dive straight into one of them?

SPEAKER_01 23:03

You just go past it.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

You make it through to the other side. And that's sort of what we try and do. We go after the biggest, highest valuable things and we jump straight into them. And as soon as you've made the decision about what is that big wave you're going after, for us it was like, how does a human being understand the facts within a massive, complex, horrible set of documents and actually become confident that that this is the narrative or the letter or the work product they want to produce from that? That's actually a really difficult problem. Uh the way I describe that is um it's like, you know, if you're gonna build the one ring from Lord of the Rings, build it in Mordor. In this metaphor, I am Sauron. So it's not a good metaphor, I need to work on it, but we're trying to understand how a human can confidently demonstrate a draft of a document from facts inside of the most complex litigation in the world, documents in the world, and they can defend that in court. That's like the only place where you should, if you're going to do it first, try and understand how to extract facts from documents, right? Uh and so we've gone after the hardest, most difficult thing, which is the biggest bottleneck in law, and that's the big wave we're going after. Um, and then if you're gonna do that, go all the way.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

I like that. That is beautifully said, stated. I like that. With the US expansion, that's very exciting, but obviously comes with some key risks as well. Why was the US the next step and not Europe or other markets like APAC?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah. Uh

📈 why 550,000 us law firms changed everything

SPEAKER_00 24:25

well, how many law firms do you think there are in Australia? Take a guess.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Including the small boutique firms. 20?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

There are 16,000. Yeah. Do you know how many there are in the UK?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

The UK. I don't know. 30,000.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

8,000.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

What?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

They're they're more consolidated, and actually it doesn't quite it's a more it's a compelling stat, but actually there's probably a lot more lawyers over there than there are here. But and then how many do you think this is 16,000 in Australia? How many do you think are in the US?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

A lot more, like multiples of that, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

550,000. Okay. So it's a huge difference, and they're incredibly litigative as a people as well. Yeah. There's specific reasons for that, but actually it's a it's an incredible legal system, and they're all fundamentally based on common law. So uh we we only had natural jumps to particular places, so and it's places that are really, you know, foundationally built on English common law. So you're part most of Europe is not, but it's actually like uh the UK, New Zealand, Singapore, the US, Canada, India, I think. Like these are the places where we had like the next natural step just based on they handle legal matters in the same way and the same process.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

And the US represents the biggest opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

And where are you along that pathway to expansion there?

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Well, we've just opened a New York office and a San Francisco office. I'm now on the phone to to both teams like every morning, noon, and night. Um, it's really exciting. Um, we've started winning lots of US customers.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Um, and hopefully it becomes uh, you know, a a major part of our business um by the end of this year.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Has anything surprised you in this new phase of the company with entering that market? Are there any key differences you're already noticing between both systems?

SPEAKER_00 26:20

There's certainly key differences. Um but the key differences I focus on, I suppose, are how do they talk about the same problems? There's a real difference there though.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

More of a from a cultural perspective or um to give you one example, we have barristers here.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

They don't have barristers, they just have attorneys that do effectively the same job as a lawyer and a a barrister here. But that's one like structural difference. Um but also they just operate slightly differently in the language that they use, you know?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Um even though it's still English, it's it's a different English.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

It is. And of course, over there it's far more um jurisdictional than it is here. Um not not that that that there isn't a similarity actually between the Australian states, but there's a massive difference, for example, between one side of the country and the other in how they talk, even. So yeah, you you just we're we're learning about that and what they need that that represents a slightly different use case than here. So we're definitely the beginning of the journey, I would say. Um, and it's terrifying. You know, it's such a huge and meaningful thing for us. Um, and so we've got to we've got to try and get it right within budget, you know, and that's a within budget. Yeah, it's a diff that's a difficult thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Um, and especially when so much of our company, I mean, uh I feel like a lot of our success has been um hearts and minds. You know, there's a value, there's there's a benefit of operating in Australia and being an Australian company. Um, we won't have that advantage in the US, and we're coming into a much more mature market than what we did when we were here in Australia. So it represents a totally different challenge. That's true. I'm gonna learn loads. Yeah, and we'll I'll come back on the podcast and tell you about all the mistakes we make.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

I think I was a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I'm gonna start recording them now for you.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

So will you still be based here in Sydney or will you have to move to New York or San Francisco? Yeah, what's the plan?

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Between both.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Yeah, and and also the UK and Europe. Um, mainly the UK uh uh that way. But yeah, I mean the last few months have just been back and forth and between the countries, and I imagine it's only going to be more of that.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Very, very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

That's super.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

What would you tell a founder who's trying to build in a very traditional, perhaps conservative industry when nobody wants to change?

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Which industry? Tell me about it. I'd love to come and uh help them. But I mean, I don't think that's true true. But if look, I I would tell

🌍 advice for building in resistant industries

SPEAKER_00 28:43

them the same thing that I would tell an AI founder. Technology hasn't really changed the game at all. What really matters is you build what your customers need, or you deliver a service that your customers really need. Uh, when they tell you what else they need, listen and watch how they use what you've built. Really care about giving them customer support and look after the money, and uh and really your company is focused and always will be focused on the people that you have inside of it and how much they care for the people that you're delivering value to. Nothing's changed.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

No, yeah. Just also.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I just think there's gonna be a challenge for lots of people when they're trying to build companies that are they look maybe a little different because it's primarily focused around AI and things like that, but companies are still exactly the same thing. And I think we forget some of those fundamentals sometimes, but we don't, uh Mary, you're like we just focus on the fundamentals fun, really.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

For sure. Do you brand yourselves as an AI company or yeah?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

We're we're we're AI from the ground up from a technology perspective. Um, but I don't think that will be the defining factor for any company in five years. Because every company is going to leverage whatever technology, and that's really what Mary is. It's less of an AI company, more of we're going to build value to solve these problems for these people with whatever technology works best. So in some cases, it might be the most mundane technology, uh standard form or something that's been around for years. Whereas in other cases it might be the latest and most sharp and bleeding edge of what's possible with AI. But really, the the choice you should make is how do we solve their problem best in comparison to how do we just use this technology.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

One of my favorite stories is how the name came to be. Would you like to tell it?

SPEAKER_00 30:30

I'm sure I won't do it justice. But um Mary is Rowan's auntie, but she is a Victorian family law barrister, and she really helped him get into the law, and she's ruthlessly efficient. Um, so we say every firm deserves a Mary. Um interestingly, you know, Mary uh uh represents us a little bit every now and then if she can. But we've so many times we've tried to get Mary to go to an event and like get her flowers, but she's too busy, and so it's like, you know, she's ruthlessly efficient to the point where she doesn't even have time to come and represent Mary. Um but she was she actually represented us at the Women in AI Law uh and Law Awards last year, so it was great for her to be.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

That's amazing, truly. Last question, and completely off topic. You've spent obviously years in telemarketing, as we've talked about. What's the best thing anyone ever said to you when you cold called them?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

I have no idea. I mean, I've remember cold calling is like calling 150 people a day.

🎯 telemarketing, the most valuable job he ever had

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Anything did anything stay with you or and if not, that's completely fine as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

I mean, I didn't hear anything just once.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Whether it was fuck off, through to wow, perfect timing. You know, I've heard everything because at that time you're doing 150 calls a day or something. Um I would suggest to anybody that really wants to learn sales, telemarketing's a wonderful place to start, even though it's the least glamorous thing you can do. It's still the most valuable job I've had of everything. It taught me everything, yeah, from a sales perspective.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

And as a CEO, you do a lot of selling, so I can see how that's important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Yeah. You wouldn't have thought it. And I I I never thought I'd look back and go, wow, that telemarketing job was the best job I've ever had. But it really because in a telemarketing job, often in that particular one, we had a different product every week. And so you really learn that it's not about the product, it's actually just about what that person needs. And it's that fundamental truth that sort of has driven everything I've ever done. That, you know, it's not necessarily about you, it's about them, right? And so good job if you want to get into sales, but horrible. So be prepared for you know, years of tough times.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

You've heard it here. Thank you so much, Daniel. This has been really good. No problem.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

I hope it has. Thank you so much.