How Vable Helps Law Firms Turn News Into Insight and Action

We sit down with Matthew Dickinson, founder and CEO of Vable, (https://www.vable.com)  for a wide-ranging look at a problem every lawyer and law firm/in-house knowledge team recognizes: too much content and not enough time. Matthew walks us through how Vable grew from monitoring law firm content into a SaaS platform built for legal current awareness, helping information professionals and knowledge management teams deliver curated alerts that lawyers will actually use. We unpack why an RSS feed or generic news alerts fall short, how relevance depends on sources and context, and how AI-driven personalization can move the value from “links to read” toward “insights to act on.”

We also get practical on delivery: why email and Outlook still matter, why APIs and integrations are the future, and how being platform agnostic and content agnostic reduces tool fatigue inside big firms. 

Matthew closes with real founder advice on grit, building a values-first team, hiring for people and culture earlier than feels comfortable, and treating clients like true partners.

Subscribe for more legal tech startup conversations, share this with a colleague who lives in alerts all day, and leave a review so more builders and legal teams can find the show.

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This episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast is brought to you by:

- Legaltech Hub (https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com), the legal tech insights and analysis platform. Legaltech Hub features exclusive content written by industry experts, and it's also the place where legal professionals find the right legal technology software, events, jobs, consultants, and more, in any language, anywhere around the world. 

Transcript

Two Legal Tech Hub London Events

SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's your Legal Tech Startup Focus podcast host, Charlie Uniman, and I am so pleased to bring you Stephanie Wilkins of the Legal Tech Hub to talk about Legal Tech Hub's two upcoming events this month in London. Stephanie will fill you in on both the LTH Velocity UK get together for legal tech companies and investors that will take place on April 22 and the LTH Horizons London 2026 gathering on April 23 for lawyers, clients, and legal innovators. Over to you, Stephanie.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Hi, Legal Tech Startup Focus listeners. I'm Stephanie Wilkins, Director of Content at Legal Tech Hub, and I'm excited to share some news for those of you across the pond. We're bringing not one but two of our annual conferences to London this spring. On April 22nd, we're hosting LTH Velocity, our conference specifically designed for legal tech vendors. This is something we feel really strongly about at LTH, because vendors and startups don't have enough communities of their own, and there aren't many events that cater to their specific needs. Velocity is free to attend and will cover everything from preparing your company for exit to what investors are looking for right now to how to sell more effectively to law firms. Then on April 23rd, we have LTH Horizons. This is the second year we're bringing our flagship event for law firms and corporate legal departments to London after an energetic inaugural London event last year. We'll be diving into the topics that matter most right now, like agentic systems, orchestration layers, legal training, and what anthropic's entry into the legal market actually means for buyers. Both events are kept deliberately accessible because we want you to be able to bring your team. So if you live in the UK or plan to be there in late April, we'd love to have you join us. Head to legaltechnologyhub.com, find events in the top menu, and sign up. We hope to see you there.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Don't be alarmed, nothing too elaborate, it's just my office. But we can't pretend we have a big studio. I am so happy uh to introduce and have as a guest on the podcast uh Matthew Dickinson, who is CEO at a uh company that lawyers uh must learn about if they don't already know. Vable, V-A-B-L-E. Uh welcome, Matthew.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Hello, Charlie. Lovely, lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Thank you so much. Uh great to have you. I uh, unlike our listeners, have had a chance to talk to Matthew a bit. Um you're gonna get this underway and shut up myself. But um we'll begin, as we often do on the podcast, by asking Matthew to give us uh a bit of background about his own professional journey into the space where he finds himself. And then, of course, we want to feature what Vable does, uh what uh services and products it offers, and and and its uh its own uh uh special sauce that it brings. So, Matthew, tell us a little bit about yourself, and then let's segue into your telling us about Vable.

From Lawyer To Founder

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Sure, sure, thank you very much. So, yeah, my my background is was slightly unconventional. I I was uh I I was uh studied philosophy at university, I then did a a law master's and then I um qualified as a lawyer. Um so I I practiced law for uh three or four years in London. Um I then um I had a sort of entrepreneurial itch, um the early 2000s, um, and I had a um sort of a lot of confidence in my ability, and uh which proved to be unfounded. Um I I left the law and I I founded up uh a company called 3DI Media. Uh it was to create three-dimensional spaces, etc. But it was the wrong time, and uh we didn't have any funding and a lot of challenges. It taught me a huge amount, um, and I spent 12 months with no salary. Um, and um at the same time, I uh well during that time I also got engaged and uh I was under a lot of pressure to get back into earning a decent salary. So with my tail between my legs um and thinking that was my first and last foray into entrepreneurship, I went back to the law as a corporate um and commercial lawyer. Um and and that was great, and I sort of got stuck into things again. And um, but the the problem was it's um I I I think that I I always always had that sort of entrepreneurial mindset, and I um thinking about efficiency, how to improve things. Um, and in my firm, I kind of felt you know the partners, they all had their different sort of precedents, and we created contracts from scratch each time, and I kind of thought, well, you know, we've got to be able to improve how we do these things. Um, and um so I realized that my passion was actually in solving these problems, um, not in actually practicing the law. Um, and when I was sitting there in in client meetings and I had these sort of young entrepreneurs coming up and asking me to draft their JV agreements and that sort of thing, I was kind of felt, no, I've got better ideas, and I think I can be better than them, and I need to be on the other side of the table. So I um and and and also that you know that that's entrepreneurial itch. I mean, once you've had it, it's it's difficult to get rid of, and it started itching more and more. So I I decided to give it another go. Um, and I left the law. Um, I had an idea, I had lots of ideas, but uh one in particular, um, which was about monitoring um law firm content and making it much more efficient for um lawyers and companies and and and and in law firms to get access to this information. And this is the time back in the early 2000s, law firms were investing much, much more into digital content, digital newsletters, pushing out a huge amount of information for sort of you know BD marketing purposes um uh and client relationship building. And um so we we had uh zero money for this business and decided to move back up to Yorkshire where I came from, a beautiful part of England, which if no one's been there, if you haven't been there, just um definitely look at look into it. Um and we started simple. Um and I actually moved up to my wife. We just had our second child just been born. Um and so we so I I locked myself away for a few months and built out the initial version of the of the of the platform. I taught myself coding, um, and um it was very much sort of bringing um or monitoring content produced by law firms, producing newsletters or alerts on a weekly basis um covering different sectors of the law, um both for the UK and US audience, and and then later we extended also to Australia. Um the the business model was around subscriptions. So um we we had clients subscribing um to these alerts, and and it was a it was great. The first time we I made a sale, it was um it was uh a great moment. It wasn't the money was very small. It was but it was a validation, and and you know the the fact that some someone out there um wanted to buy what I was producing was uh was a great moment. And it was the point where I thought, right, yes, I can definitely turn this into a business. Um back down to London, um, met lots of um sort of potential investors, did a small angel round, a small amount of money in the tens of thousands, um, but it was enough to get this one going um and um to allay some of the fears my wife had about what's going on here. Um and took on a couple of law students and we grew from there. Um and there was a massive challenge. So it was a lot of grind, as you can imagine, um developing business on low budget. Um we set up an office in London. I was down in London every week at this point, um, and um the the the model was great and we're sort of building out and taking on more and more clients. It was low value, uh, but then we added on another side, which was um law firms paying to get their content into our alerts because they were going out to in-house council. So it's actually quite interesting. We had some law firms who are paying to put their content in, and then they paid to get the content out again, um, which was quite an interesting angle. Um, we raised more money, automated and built out the more of the back end stuff, and I I gave you know um hung up my boots when it comes to being a a developer, but etc. Um, got some professionals on board and and we um built out uh built out all the back end. We sped ourselves a bit too thin. Um and so we dropped the marketing distribution because we wanted to be fully inclusive and have every law firm's content in there, all government and regulatory content and and and cover the board. So we dropped that whole model of charging to have content in and focused uh and actually we dropped the the subscription model as well because we realized that the the platform we'd developed was more valuable to our clients who could then use it to create whatever alerts they want. So we've then sort of moved into fully SaaS business.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Gotcha. Very, very, very good introduction. Yeah, continue, please.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Well, it just I just want to sort of emphasize you know, the the the journey here, and this is why it's unconventional. There was no grand vision about sort of starting off, this is what I want to build, etc. It very much evolved. Um, it evolved by listening to clients and solving their problems. And that's the that's just been my approach um throughout all of this. Um understanding and and you know, that's where Vable um starting off sort of aggregating content for law firms creating newsletters to actually becoming a SaaS platform for solving lawyers' problems, which is too much content, not enough time, um, and and also that fear of missing out. So trying to balance, they don't want to miss out, they want it all, but they don't want it all kind of thing. Um we serve the mostly the information team. So we don't serve lawyers directly. We serve the information teams who are serving the lawyers. Um, so our kind of core audience has been sort of those larger law firms, international law firms, multiple offices, um, et cetera, and they've got a well-established information team who are thinking about where's the content coming, what are they subscribing to, all the subscription content from Lexus, et cetera, um, all the public content, and and helping them deliver a great service to the lawyers.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

So I I I guess if you're a librarian, a knowledge management person at the law firm, those are the uh people to use the word interface that you interface with from a customer standpoint principally. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Absolutely. And and to date, many of the end users, lawyers have no idea of our existence uh because they receive beautifully curated um alerts, often branded with the library brand or the law firm brand, um, into their outlook, whatever it may be. And and and this there's a lot of stuff going on in the background um by the information team, et cetera, which uh and you know what Vable does, et cetera, which the lawyers don't know about.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Well, well, the the way to get into what Vable does uh for for me, for my for my understandings, purposes, and perhaps for the audience, is to contrast it, I I I presume, with what I now, and by the way, you're a sharper stick than I. It took me 40 years of practicing in New York to figure out that I I might have an entrepreneurial bent. And uh yes, I will put Yorkshire on my map of places to visit when I get to the UK, uh, by all means. Um but I I am uh not practicing now. I uh, as every practicing lawyer does want information, and I have what is known as a RSS feed. Just a list, and these some of these RSS readers can get much more complicated. But I have a list of newsletters and I have a list of uh uh uh websites uh that uh publish and get picked up by these feeds, and that's it. I just have to pick and choose from among the feeds that I'm interested in. I I presume, and as a practicing lawyer, I would want a a more uh uh uh developed uh uh interface, uh a better means for selection, a better means for alerting than my simple RSS feed uh uh allows me as a as a retail consumer. Tell us how does Vable differ from my um simplistic RSS feed in many ways, I presume.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Well, firstly, I think thinking, what do you really want? You don't want, I mean, you may follow 10, 15 different sources and et cetera, and you get a lot of content from these sources. And and some of those sources could be quite well curated, but you've got a broad area of interest. You want to monitor clients, you want to monitor industry sectors, you want to think about you know future things that may be happening. So you've got a broad area of interest. Um, and and you don't want to spend too much time having to go through thinking, is this relevant, is this not relevant, etc. What is relevant? Um and that's really what Vable does. It will you know think about every the whole corpus of of information, where it's all coming from, um, and you want every morning probably a short digest of content, of of links to articles um covering all the things you're interested in. Um and you know, you you can have Google News alerts or these sort of things, but what we're really strong at is is about how organizations do this. So sort of thinking about teams um and and sort of you know practice areas, what are they all interested in and ensuring that subscription content and the public content is all brought together into very easy to digest um alerts? Um, and and generally they go into people's outlook, etc. But I I think that there's a there's a an evolution on from there because okay, fine, and our business model's all being built up on filtering this all out and and and making sure you're just getting those uh news articles from that one RSS feed that are relevant to you and all those other 15, 20 other alerts. Um, but actually the the where we want to take this is that you you don't actually want to even read these articles anymore. Uh you want what is the insights that can be uh provided to me. What do I need to know about today or even tomorrow? Tell me something tomorrow that is going to be important to me, which is gonna give me a reason to call up my client, uh have a call with my client, and have a meeting with my client and generate new business on my client as a result of having read that piece of article. And that's the that's the the the the the you know the the end game of where we want to go. And and of of course there's a lot of noise and things, and achieving that is is very difficult. But that's that's the ultimate goal. Um, thinking about future stuff, future events, and you don't want to and this is where AI comes in hugely now, and it makes it much easier for us to provide that level of service to the lawyers.

Librarians Plus AI Personalization

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Yeah, I well you you beat me to it. Uh you know, I have a mental game that I play with myself during these podcasts. Um, and the game is who's gonna use the word AI first? Will it be me or or will it be the podcast guest? You you bing bing bing, you won that one. Um and and that leads me to ask, uh yes, you're right. Uh lawyers want, at least this lawyer would have wanted, uh back in the day, the ability to say uh two things. Uh give me uh what I knowing what you know about me, uh give me what I need to be proactive, to reach out to clients with that business development uh idea in the back of my mind. And and also, and maybe AI can play a role here, uh don't make me read the whole bloody thing. Maybe summarize it a little bit, maybe uh bullet point it, maybe enable me to decide whether I want to dig in and read the whole article or or uh or newsletter. Uh does that filtering come uh from the uh the the knowledge librarian, librarian people first at the law firm? Uh or does it come from Vable? Does it come from AI? Does do all three work together? How does that fit into the picture?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, so everybody, I mean the thing is, you know, relevancy. I mean, it's it's incredibly subjective. And what's what's important to you is different to somebody similar to you, for instance. Um so the there's multiple ways, but firstly, you know, what's important is based upon um the publisher, the source. Um you will regard some um content or different publishers with you know um uh are more valuable to you. Um the um librarians do, or the information professionals at the moment have played a very important role because they've been the ones understanding what you want and crafting Boolean searches and using filters to create something that's relevant to you and other people like you. So, you know, this practice area here's a practice area alert, or here's 30 or 40 different practice area alerts, which will be relevant to all those people in that practice area based upon the knowledge of the librarian and the knowledge of where the content comes from. Um, but of course, where we want to get to, and we sort of you know utilizing AI now to get there, is the more you do in a platform like this, um, and the more the AI knows what you personally are interested in, what type of publications you are interested in as sources, and the sort of more granular um level of um this looking at this um topic from a different angle, a different perspective. Um, and that's where it's gonna be very interesting when it becomes very personalized. Um and you know, at the moment we've got a great business because it's good enough. But I I think what we're seeing now is um the mindset and the expectations of people, lawyers particularly, um they're expecting something much more tailored now to them. And we all are from you know, in everything we do in life, we want that something tailored, and we know that AI can deliver on that. Um and so uh that's uh um something which you know we're we're not there yet, and there's quite a lot of work still to do. But that that's the um with the the goal is is for each lawyer in every single one of our law firm clients is to have something very tailored to them. Uh and that comes partly from the involvement of of librarians um who are sort of managing these whole processes, but also from the AI learning more about what the individual actually is interested in.

Delivering Insights Where Lawyers Work

SPEAKER_02 19:06

And I do agree with you. I think that lawyers um often looking to the past, but uh in the face of this uh fire hose of AI development, are beginning to uh learn, and they're they're attending conferences and they're reading articles about this, that they can avail themselves of these AI tools to customize and alert them and slim down the fire hose of information to the most valuable, I won't say trickle, to the most valuable stream of information that they can have. And and the good thing about uh an outfit like Vable is you know, having been in the business for a while, having a team, having engineers, uh uh happy to hear you're not uh coding as much uh anymore. Um they they you know you have the resources with which to be able to uh look at these AI models out there that can't do everything and aren't conscious, but still can do a hell of a job of uh learning from data and learning to personalize and and bring bring those resources that you have to really get to work on uh making uh making this work. I I I want to ask when uh when a lawyer uh sits down and and interacts with Vable, perhaps not even knowing that it's Vable, seeing something that may be branded with its own uh uh uh uh uh law firm logo and and uh a welcome from the information team, where where do they see it? Do they see it in in Outlook? What's the interface? And and I'll I'll I'll interrupt myself and say, as as Matthew and I joked beforehand, uh lawyers are busy, focus very intensively, intensely I should say, on on uh on their work, but they don't want to be distracted from that work. What what's the uh user interface uh that that they uh have and how do you make it straightforward enough for the lawyer to say, I get it?

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, we we've um traditionally it's everything it's been email, um, people getting things into Outlook, and that's where they work. But we we're all moving. Moving on beyond email now, and and sort of uh even in our company we we use email internally hardly ever. Um the we we've built out APIs um so we can deliver the content into any third-party platform. And that's a big part of our sort of strategy going forward and working with um those suppliers uh and vendors um who have those platforms. Where do the lawyers want to work? Um so if a lawyer is is working on a particular file, particular matter about a particular client, um, it's so important for them to be able to also have a little widget there or a way to view any updates or you know, something maybe a very interesting piece of news today about that particular client. And they would need they don't want to have to go off somewhere else and find that. They want it. In the place where they're working. So that is something which we have now got the capability for. And starting to sort of talk to various other sort of vendors to sort of see about sort of how we can start deliver the content into the where the lawyers are actually working. So we then become more of a sort of a backbone, sort of the engine behind it all. And it's very important the sort of relationshipships we have now with some of these other companies who have got some fantastic interfaces where lawyers are actually working.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah, I uh I had mentioned to uh Matthew before we hit the record button that when I practiced in technology had grown up a little bit, I envisioned this marvelous dashboard that I would sit in front of at my uh desk and and have not only all the documents that I uh want to see that day ready to be worked on and and uh all of the uh business-related matters, internal business-related matters about this particular uh uh deal that I'm working on, but also an information feed. Uh now today that platform might very well be something the law firm designs, an intra firm portal of some sort. It might be Harvey, it might be Lagora, it might be Letera, any of these uh vendors that uh you know are becoming the uh you know the the uh one place to go, the one source of truth for practice. Uh and many of our listeners uh are uh startup leaders and more mature company leaders in LagorTech who are who have built and are building these things. So I take it that that Vable is sort of uh platform agnostic. They they could, if if uh I, Charlie Uniman, had this massively successful Legal Tech uh uh uh platform, you could integrate with my platform and and and show up if that were the sole source of truth that law firms uh wanted to open it, lawyers' eyes up to in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah, yeah, and it's so true. And you really it it's but it's you know it's one thing being uh sort of content agnostic, but we what we need to do also is make it incredibly simple, plug and play kind of thing. Um and you know, it's it's very easy to make things complicated. Um, but it it it it's um the the hard thing is is to make it incredibly simple. And you know, thinking about being agnostic, yes, um con platform agnostic is is absolutely key. And and you know, we we've invested a lot of time, we've built out our own platform, which is you know, uh quite a lot of it, quite quite good adoption, but the there's a lot of fatigue when it comes out to uh here's yet another platform out there. So I think that the approach for us is to work with um those um you know the litieras of this world um who are doing a great job in terms of providing a a one one-stop shop for for lawyers to access all information. Um and and just thinking about agnostic, being agnostic, I think it's important to stress that sort of you know, we are also um content agnostic. Um and that's sort of a sort of a one of the ways we differentiate ourselves from those sort of platforms that is sort of Lexus Newsdesk or Bloomberg BNA, etc. We're not pushing our own content, right? We are out to work with every single publisher out there, and that's so that's one of our uh sort of you know it's a core strategic approaches, is to be able to with a with a law firm with a client, every bit of content that they want to consume when it comes to current awareness, new stuff coming in. We want that to all be going through um their Vable platform. So when it's thinking about Lexus, I mean they're they're you know they're competitors to a certain extent, but they're they're also one of our partners because we've got a lot of law firms who have their um Lexus content coming through into the Vable platform and appearing in their practice area specific or their client-specific alerts alongside other content.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Well, you you you sit there with an up and running and successful business in Vable. You you know what your business model is, you uh you you're developing uh uh you know more tooling, particularly, I suppose, in the Gen AI area. Pardon me. Um if you were to uh look more broadly at the information space and uh and what lawyers need, uh uh what do you see by way of gaps that need to be filled, uh future needs that technology can meet, more more broad uh thinking. Uh here you are the CEO, you have to operate a business, but I think you have to uh be a bit of a thought leader uh yourself, uh even if only to steer Vable uh the right way. What what do you what do you think about when you're thinking more broadly?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Oh, gosh. Uh I I think um keep it incredibly simple. But uh what what do I mean by that? I mean, I suppose um uh the the old model um has always been about you know legal publishers, they owned the information, the cases, the statutes, the commentary, etc. That was their IP, which was their motor. Um and and you know, you paid for access to this own content. And and I think you know, then we have so much information out there. There's more and more creators of content. Um technology has democratized access, and AI is certainly accelerating this. Um, anyone with a phone has access to a massive amount of information. And I I when I was sort of you know thinking about this, I'm I'm thinking about sort of you know, in in other industries, other sectors, um, you for instance in the music industry, Spotify doesn't didn't win by owning the content, owning the songs, they won on the access, the curation, the experience. And I think that the same shift is definitely happening in legal information, and this is you know a lot of people are aware of this. Um so so that sort of shift is important. So it's down to the experience. And this is you know, it's an area which is you know we are we realize that we've got to get right. It's about the the um the user experience um for the lawyers, um not and as I mentioned earlier, it's not about you know, here's more articles for them to read. Great, we need to evolve quickly, um, and it's about the insights what should I know? And that's a it's a massive area for us to get right. And I think that's what um you know AI is never going to replace lawyers because lawyers have the experience of understanding what is important and what's not. But what's changing is how people get access, who owns the information and how quickly can one get access to information. When I was practicing as a lawyer, I kind of thought, well, I don't need to know much because I can get access to that information. I need to be able to understand it. And and the faster I can get access to information and as long as I can understand it, I will be a very successful lawyer. But I never followed through on that idea, and I have no idea how successful I would have been as a lawyer. But I think that's really important in terms of thinking about you know any information in any sector. We'd know, you know, the in time uh ownership is going to be less important. It's going to be how one delivers it, how you make it available, and what the user experience is for um people to get access to what they want and make it really relevant, like I was talking before. It's about what does what does Charlie want to have access to and what does he consider relevant compared to what um you know somebody else, another um podcaster thinks is important.

Founder Advice On Grit And Teams

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Uh you know, uh that that analogy with uh Spotify is is spot on. Um you know, I I I look at Spotify, I look at Apple Music, I look at SoundCloud, and I make my choice. Uh and I happen to have picked Apple Music, I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy, um because I like the way their lyrics are streamed to me as I listen to the song because I like their recommendation engine. And and you're so right. Uh Apple Music doesn't own the IP, the musicians and and their publishing companies do. But I think uh, you know, it's the manner of delivery, it's surfacing the music that I didn't even know I I wanted because I it was an unknown, unknown to me. Um it had acquired through uh artificial intelligence a sense of my taste. So I I love that analogy. I I think that's a wonderful way for you know a person of the law firm, a librarian or a knowledge management person to understand what it is that Vable is is bringing to the to the uh table. And uh, you know, I I can think of any number of of knowledge forces. Uh I've I've interviewed a pot on a podcast, a fellow who um who works at a legal tech startup that provides uh government uh specific information, developing legislation all throughout the United States, uh from local to federal. Uh, you know, it it he he uh he just wants the information to be available and he wants to get it in front of people. And if you know he could team up with available to make sure that he gets it in front of people uh where they are, where they work, that would that would be great. So yeah, it it uh as I often say to myself after having interviewed a person such as you, um, oh, why couldn't I have had these tools when I practiced? I retired I retired 10, 11 years ago, and you know, we had technology, of course we did, uh uh, but uh nothing of the sort that we have now. And as my listeners have heard me say, the technology that today is the worst day that technology will ever be. It uh it always always gets better. Um so you you you said you uh uh you you you'd spent some time practicing law, you were smarter than I, uh I say in retrospect, you you've started Able, you're working with it. You've had your ups and downs, you've learned things often through trial and error, I I assume. Um and some of the people to whom you're talking when we publish this are going to be uh startup leaders themselves, some more experienced, some brand new. Any any sort of business advice, words of wisdom based on your own experience that you might want to convey to people who um are are uh either as now former lawyers or or as people coming into the space dealing with lawyers in particular, would want to impart to the listeners who were running businesses in in the legal tech vertical.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Well, um I I I think the first thought that comes to my mind is don't do it my way. Um what you know that there's I I I I I joke a bit about that because I I think my way is has been um I mean it's been a long, long way has been a hard, hard grind. But the um you know, there's sort of thinking about people kicking off in this space and thinking, yeah, but that's great, I've got a great idea. I'm gonna do the conventional way, which is what they're gonna go and raise that you know, racing to raise the biggest rounds, and they're gonna scale fast um before AI commoditizes, and there's always a race, race, race, and a bit of sort of concern there, and then they're gonna hire aggressively and they're gonna capture market share. Uh and these are things that we didn't do any of those things at all. Um, but I I think there's there's a bit of a risk with all of that because I I think too much money um plus limited experience can kill and often does kill companies. They expand too fast and they they made the wrong hires and they didn't realize all the challenges of of building teams, building companies, etc. Um, and and certainly in our respect, I mean it's it's um, you know, money, a small amount of money, it does keep you very tight, it keeps you focused. Um, we've organically grown over 20 years, and you know, my original um envelope and in which I wrote my plan um was I I think I was gonna sell out within three years and um go and you know do other things. But it's um I've I've been on this on this boat ride for a long time. It's been a fantastic journey, but and I've learned a huge amount. Uh it's definitely taken longer than I expected. Um, but I I've built a really solid team uh with the right values. Um and the risks we've taken have been smaller, um, and we've navigated. I always think of myself uh, or not myself, but the company as a small rowing boat uh as opposed to a great big oil tanker. And we've been able to, when there's a storm and things, we've been able to navigate through um uh and we need to and change direction quickly. So, you know, so thinking about all of this, I the you know, I've got you know three points to really sort of you know talk about, so you know, you know, think about the advice, etc. One is about you know building resilience, um, and you you need to have a huge amount of confidence in what you're doing, um, passion about what you're doing and and and the grit. You need to, every time you get knocked down, you need to get back up again. And if you're not up for that, then probably stay employed and and and and work for somebody else. Um, the um second one is about building a great team. And and that, you know, that's something which you know I've learned over time what a great team really means. Um and it's not just about a leadership team, but I think it's it's about making sure everybody has the right values and investing strongly in the values um and everybody putting the right in in the sort of right direction. Um and you know, one of the best roles I ever filled, um, and probably later than I should, was the head of people and culture. Um and my advice to any entrepreneurs is don't leave that too late. Get that in there, um, building the great team um and and everybody going the right direction. Um I I sadly, when I kicked this off, and I still am, I I I didn't have any um other co-founders um to to you know carry the the weight and the load. So it was just myself. And that was a little bit of a regret. I I think it would be if I'd done this again, I I would go and find um some other people at sort of my level, as as passionate as I am, and and um uh you know work together on this. So it was quite lonely at times. Um the uh my mentality is very much um work out how to do something, and that was great for founding a company. I just any problem, I've worked out how to do it as quick quicker than anybody else, and I solved the problems. Um, and that's you know, these are that's a character trait for for most founders, but it's quite difficult to transition from being a um um a scrappy person, sort of working in scrappy environments and being in the weeds to actually getting to that stage of being able to scale. You need to think differently. Um, a great book I read was uh one called um uh uh who not how um by I think Dan Sullivan. Yes, yes, I know the book which is great, and I think Benjamin Hardy. Um stop working, I had to teach myself this, stop working out how to work out things. Um, find the who, find somebody who's gonna do it for you. And this is so important that you start sort of, you know, one of the 10x things personally, but also in business. Um, and that transition is very, very difficult, but it has to happen. Um and that's already, you know, it's about getting the right people into the team, building, building the right teams. And my final point, um, my little nugget, um, which I would like to share um is and this is the direction we took it, is focusing on clients um and making it a partnership. And that's kind of it's kind of connected with the who, not how idea, because you know, the the we are the clients who, we're delivering, we're helping them, and there are who, they're helping us. And we we invest heavily in the client relationship. And and um it's um I think that um our growth and how you know we we've retained nearly all our clients, um, but that's our success to date hasn't been because our product has been really easy or anything else like that. And we're gonna make it really easy and we're gonna hopefully expand much faster. But our our success to date has been because our is the relationship with our clients, our clients trust us, they've helped us, they provided referrals, they want us to succeed. And that relationship has been invaluable to us. So don't underestimate the importance of whilst you're going out there and build out the sales and everything else and bring on focus, keep your existing clients, um, is my final bit of advice there.

How To Reach Vable And Matthew

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Yeah, I think that um having happy uh clients, customers is is one of the best marketing uh uh tools any company can have. And uh uh I I can say from having looked at uh Vable's website, uh quite a client roster that you have, Matthew. Congratulations uh on that. And and and uh I I I I think uh what you pointed out uh is that you know uh the three points you made, you have to be sensitive to that, uh those those various points. For example, team building, it'll actually uh come up uh you know uh as you find yourself stretched too thin. But be be more proactive, be more intentional about building the team. Don't just be reactive, uh think ahead, uh look for the A players, uh sharpen your pitch to to ahead of time to hire them, don't just let it happen because uh balls are being dropped and you have to hire at the last minute. Um I I I thank you very much for those those nuggets. Um they'll they'll stand people in excellent stead. If if uh people want to learn more uh about Vable and uh more importantly, perhaps get in touch with you and others at your team, uh, where do they go? How do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah, no, it's uh LinkedIn um is a great place. Um I'm up there for search for Matthew Dickinson at Vable. My email is Matthew at Vable.com. Um and our website is is got a lot of um contact information. Um not mine personally, but you get through to somebody um who will get back to you straight away. Um but look, I I'm I'm always open for discussions, and and and big part of what I want to do over this next year is start looking um to see you know those sort of third parties, other vendors who we can work with. It's all about partnerships um and and sort of um how together we can help our clients. Uh we can't do it alone. We're just one little cog in the whole wheel of experience. Um, but I I think we're gonna be an important cog.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Okay, yeah, a bright and shiny cog indeed, from from what I've I've gathered uh today. Uh Matthew, uh uh I I I look forward to uh meeting you in person. Uh the last podcast guest I had, I actually had met before uh we podcasted, but I can't say I've had the pleasure of meeting you. So when you get to New York, I'm only uh a few minutes, 30 minutes or so outside the city. Do let me know. Uh I used to live there, I I've been told, and I think it's still the case since I left living in New York to have a few good restaurants and bars there. Uh and if uh I get over to the other side of uh of the pond, as we say, I will uh make it a point to find out if you're gonna be around where I am. And uh I'll certainly try to get to Yorkshire, but we we should meet up. There are plenty of conferences, so I'm sure we'll come across one another in real life.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yeah, I I think so. I might be I might be in New York before you get over here. So no, I I start I I seriously look forward to um to meeting up with you in person.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yes, indeed. Uh thank you for joining me. It's been a wonderful podcast, and uh I do look forward to hoisting a beer with you somewhere soon.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Likewise, likewise. Thanks so much.

Community Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Legal Tech Startup Focus Podcast. If you're interested in legal tech startups and enjoyed this podcast, please consider joining the free Legal Tech Startup Focus community by going to www.legaltech startup focus.com and signing up. Again, thanks.