The L Suite -- A Curated Peer Community That Helps GCs Move Faster and Smarter

Most leaders in legal don’t need more written content. They need a trusted room full of peers who’ve already lived the problem and will tell the truth about what actually works. That’s what podcast host Charlie Uniman explores with Greg Raiten, co-founder of The L Suite (https://www.lsuite.co/), an invite-only executive peer collective with communities for senior legal counsel, legal operations leaders, and other kinds of professionals.

Greg shares his path from his early practice days at Latham to startup-focused work at Gunderson and into senior in-house roles in venture, where he felt the pressure that comes with being “the top legal person” in a fast-moving company. We talk about how that experience sparked Tech GC, a monthly dinner series for venture-backed startup general counsel, and how it expanded into The L Suite with multiple membership layers, a paid model, and a growing international footprint.

We also dig into the product side of The L Suite: the Brain Trust member platform with peer-to-peer forums, a forms and playbooks library, and a highly practical recommendations engine for best practices. Greg explains how The L Suite also supports continuing legal education (CLE) for in-house teams, and why The L Suite built "Lloyd," an AI tool that doesn’t just answer questions but points you to the relevant peer thread, webinar quote, or transcript inside the community. 

If you care about legal tech, in-house counsel, and legal ops leadership, and building high-trust communities that scale, subscribe to the podcast, share this conversation, and leave a review so that more legal leaders can discover The L Suite.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome everyone. This is your podcast host at the Legal Tech Startup Focus podcast, Charlie Uniman. And I'm very pleased to welcome as a podcast guest today, Greg Rayton, the co-founder of something we're going to explore in some depth, Depth the L Suite, which is in an executive peer community. I think I'm correct in saying it's invite only, it's very special. I uh had a chance to talk to Greg uh previously, got a little bit of a lowdown on that. But before we go any further, let me say welcome, uh Greg.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Thanks, Charlie. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Wonderful to have you.

From Biglaw To Venture GC

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So let's begin as we often do by getting a little bit of background from Greg as to how he started the L Suite, his road to that. Uh and then, of course, we're going to go as we usually do, right into what the product, the service, the offering is, what the L-suite is all about. So Greg, tell us about uh how you got to where you are with the L-suite.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, sure. So um I started after law school and went the law firm route. Um I spent about five years, a little over five years, working in law firms. First in New York, uh, I went to Latham and Watkins right after graduating, did about three years at Latham doing MA and capital markets work mostly. Um, really was interested in being kind of a general corporate lawyer. Um, Latham had a great program at the time that you could be unassigned for the first couple of years. You get to try different practice areas and move around a bit. I pretty much stuck with MA and capital markets and then really wanted to get into startup work. And this was back, I graduated in 2008. Um, there wasn't really a big tech or startup scene here in New York, or at least not one that I was all that familiar with. And I had this idea that if I if I want to get into startups, I really need to move to the Bay Area. Um, fortunately, my wife was also from California and she was excited to go back there. So we we made the move to the Bay Area in 2010. Um, I stayed with Latham for about a year and then ended up moving to Gunderson and really started doing um you know startup work, so representing small startups and and venture funds as outside council. Uh one of my clients was 500 startups, which is now 500 global. So for those who don't know, 500 is is one of the accelerator incubator models, so similar to Y Combinator or Techstars. Um, they've got uh a big accelerator program in the Bay, and they also do seat investments all around the world. Um, I would they didn't have a general counsel. I I did most of their deal work and they were looking to hire a GC and I threw my hat into the ring and was able to get that job. And uh it was you know really interesting experience. My first my first experience going in-house, obviously, first time being a GC, no legal team, so building this from scratch, very, very high volume, very kind of um varied amount of complex work. Um, so you know, both fun experience, but also really, really challenging. And I spent about a year and a half there and realized like I wanted to move to a more um maybe more traditional venture platform, something that that was more uh later stage and and maybe lower volume deal work. Um, I just found myself doing a lot of the very same sort of like niche type work that I just didn't wasn't as exciting for me. So I ended up taking a job at um Firstmark Capital back in New York. And Firstmark is a very traditional Series A venture fund, um, really focused on you know tech investing, mostly in New York, but across the country. They also have a later stage fund, so they do uh, you know, both both follow-ons and and and lead deals into later stage companies. Um they had had a general console before, so I wasn't stepping into something new. Uh, it was something that, you know, taking over from someone else, and and it was a lot more, you know, let's say, mature of a of a legal department when I joined. So I spent about five years there and was the GC and then COO. And when I moved back to New York, I I had started talking, you know, one of my friends that I had met uh back through the 500 network was a GC in New York at a a Series A FinTech company called Seed Invest, which is a crowdfunding company. And we had always just talked about how hard this job is, like just being a GC, particularly a GC in tech, just like with the high growth and the venture board and all of the demands of like this hyper growth. It's it's really a unique space. And you know, it's something that I think we all, anyone who's been through that curve, like there's so much that you do in-house that's not confidential, not competitive. And we'd really, you know, thought we could all value of like getting together and exchanging ideas around that. So we started a small project on the side back in 2015 that we we called Tech GC. And the goal was just to get a group of general counsels at venture-backed

Why Tech GC Became The L Suite

SPEAKER_00 5:20

startups and venture funds together for a monthly dinner series. And we started doing these, you know, dinners and lunches in New York and and it in you know really seemed to resonate with folks. So we kind of grew a business out of that. Um uh, you know, that was kind of the the early founding of the of the company.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Well, as a community builder myself, I I uh commend you for having done such a bang up job in in putting it together from what I've read and and learned about uh the L suite. And I uh I I can't help but agree from I've never worked in-house, but I do know people who have, and it's quite challenging, especially in the milieu in which you worked. And I can very well understand how having a get-together where you could talk about non-proprietary, non-competitive-driven uh aspects of doing what you did. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. 500 startups, who was just uh not that this is directly pertinent, who was the the guy behind that sort of famous Dave McClure. Yeah, McClure. That's right. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yeah, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Indeed. So um that's the beginning. Uh and I take it you've uh taken it far from its beginnings. What is and even beyond the the tech GC now, L Suite as a as a tech GC platform for get-togethers? Excuse me, what is the L Suite doing now and how has it grown? And and um what kind of impact do you understand it to have had on the members of the community? And then we'll get into some interesting stuff with give a little tip-off here uh about Lloyd, your AI tool. But tell us more about the L-suite and how it operates today.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, absolutely. So, like you said, I mean, it is a it is a community for in-house counsel. So it's, you know, we we we really focused on the early days when we started it in 2015, it was focused entirely on general counsels. So you had to be a GC, the top legal person at your company, and you had to be um at a venture-backed tech startup or venture fund. And so we started really in that curated way. Um, the goal was to bring people together that were at similarly situated companies, you know, dealing with similar challenges. I think many of us had been a part of other communities like the ACC and others, which I think are great communities, but always found that tech is just unique and sort of the challenges that we were dealing with at tech companies were unique. And also, you know, being the GC, the one that has to think about all of it, is unique. So we we really wanted to focus on just um that kind of very curated nature. You know, now the company's grown a lot. We we did that as a side project for about three years, really built up a community and saw that there was a real opportunity here, um, and you know, ended up leaving our jobs in 2018, 2019 and and doing this full-time since. So continue to build it out. The Tech GC community has has lasted, you know, it's been 11 years now. Um, we expanded to what we now call the L Suite. And really it at its heart, it's you know, it's a curated community for in-house council. We have multiple layers within the community now for different levels of seniority. So there's still the PC only layer. We have a deputy layer for your number two, sort of, you know, senior folk leading teams. We have a council layer, and we also have a legal ops community now that um we actually acquired a community called Link and have integrated that into the L Suite uh as our legal ops network. And um, you know, so it's uh it's a paid membership model. Um, if you're an in-house counselor or legal ops professional, you can apply to join. Um, most people are nominated uh by other members, so it is sort of an invite uh or or nomination kind of membership. Um, once you're admitted, you have access to everything we do. So we we do a lot of stuff for our members. Um, I always sort of break it down at the high level, there's two things. It is events and it's uh a tech platform and and resources on that platform. So we run about 550 events a year across our communities. I I I guess I should back that up. We also started a CFO community called the F-Suite. So we have a sister community for CFOs, which we launched about four years ago. Um, across both of those, we do about 550 events. For the legal community, we do about 300 or 350 events every year. Um, that's for you know all of our members across the US and Western Europe and Israel. Uh we, you know, everything from small group local dinners through to conferences to multi-day offsites to virtual events. Um, so all of those events are included for members. They're for members only. We don't charge uh extra to go to those. Um and then on the other side, we've built a member platform that everyone gets access to. And that's really like your daily engagement with the community. So we, you know, we made this decision uh back in 2018 to actually build our own member software, which which probably wasn't the best decision back at the time. Think about it, how much you know, how much time and effort we put into it. But I think in the long run, it has been a really, really great decision for us. And we've you know created a very, very sort of curated experience um around our members and their needs in this platform. And it's got you know discussion forums where people are obviously asking each other really tactical and practical questions. It's got a forms library, people share forms and playbooks with each other. A big use case is what you know, what we call recommendations. So getting a recommendation or referral for outside counsel or vendor, right? Like who's the best employment lawyer in Boise for this type of situation? Or I'm a Series B startup, what's the best contract management platform for me at this stage with these types of needs, this contract volume? So you can get really nuanced feedback on uh, you know, who your peers trust as outside counsel or who they what what software platforms they trust and think are the best.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Um it's got but it but it's mostly member to member. I mean, the L Suite doesn't get opinionated itself as an organization on what software to use or stuff like that. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, correct. We're a neutral platform, so all of the content on the platform is member driven. So there's no no

Events, Brain Trust, And CLE Access

SPEAKER_00 11:40

no one paste advertised. There's no uh there's you know, we we like to really think about it as unbiased, right? This is who your peers are saying the best. They might have their own. We always ask people like disclose, right? If you're if you're married to this person, you should tell them that this is my husband, but I think he's great or whatever that might be. Um but yeah, it's all it's all peer-to-peer. Um, we also, you know, we CLE is obviously a big part of what lawyers need. And and once you, you know, if you move out of a law firm, it becomes a little bit more difficult sometimes to get CLE. So all of our events, we we give CLE credit, and then we acquired a CLE on-demand platform. So now we've got you know hundreds of hours of CLE, including all the specialty credits that you need uh across the state, so you can get all of our CLE needs fulfilled on the platform. Um so built a lot of tech plat uh around the community. And you know, as you mentioned, we're you know, we've we launched an AI tool recently, which sort of sits on top of all of that data and is a really interesting way to access it and tap into these kind of curated peer insights uh in an AI experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

So a member has access to uh an AI running on uh, I think you told me it was anthropic. Uh is that right?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yes. So we so we built a tool that we call Lloyd, and Lloyd is a uh an AI that sits on the platform. So our member platform is called the Brain Trust. Every member gets access, you log into the Brain Trust, it has all of those resources, you know, and um Lloyd also sits on the Brain Trust. So, right, one tab, you can log in, you can talk to Lloyd, uh, you can ask, you know, any question that you might ask uh a Claude or a Chat GPT, and it'll give you those answers. It's it's running on those, you know, those foundation models under the hood. We use all of those foundation models.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I see all of them.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yep. And but it but it'll give you that answer that you're kind of expecting. But what it does differently is that it'll always inform you if there are peer threads, peer playbooks, uh quotes from a webinar, anything on the platform that are useful to your answer. So it'll, you know, tell you like, yes, whatever. The typical thing is to do X, Y, and Z. But by the way, you know, Jane Doe at this company that's similar to yours said this in this thread and it'll link you to that thread. Or this partner from XYNZ law firm was on a webinar and they said this, which is really relevant, and it'll link you right to the minute in the video where that was said, and have the transcript below so you can follow along. So it's really kind of like interesting insights from your peers and from you know subject matter experts that you really can't find anywhere else. And that is, you know, sort of native to this experience. Um, we also built an MCP connector in Claude, which I think is what you're referring to.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

And we have Oh, that's right, the MCP. Yep. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

We have a Claude and a ChatGPT MCP connector now. Um so you can really tap into that same, you know, get access to that brain trust pure data right from your Claude or ChatGPT experience and get that woven in.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And and uh if I understand correctly, uh with the broadening that you've done uh as far as um the community entertaining council at various levels, it's no longer just a tech council community. The the the the um GCs and deputy GCs can be if if nominated or otherwise invited to join uh at companies other than outside of tech.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yep, that's right. So we um tech GC is kind of the tech sub-community under the L-suite umbrella. We also have a community that we call Enterprise GC. So that's for non-tech companies, mostly focused on larger, you know, 100 million in revenue or a thousand employees mostly. It it it we have a you can be smaller than that too, but that's sort of the the dominant uh group of members today. And those are you know from different industries like retail or manufacturing or energy or financial services. Um, so uh a lot of different companies there. Um, and you know, we we have, as I said before, like multiple layers now. So what we're seeing now on a big uh interesting motion for the community and sort of value that our members are getting is signing up their full legal department. So we might have a company with, you know, a hundred-person legal department. They sign up, we have um uh a membership, like a corporate

Lloyd AI And MCP Connectors

SPEAKER_00 15:55

team membership with all hundred people. They get all put into their own peer networks, they all get access to the CLE on demand, so they can use that for the whole department, CLE, they get access to Lloyd and the Brain Trust. So it's become an interesting sort of like department toolkit, not just an individual membership.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

So there's a real online presence. It's not uh, I mean, it's very valuable to be able to get together in real life, person to person. Uh, but um, you know, be uh betwixt and between those events, they have um, you know, the Brain Trust and Lloyd on top to to benefit from the uh the platform.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, we see it as really harmonious. You know, it's I think as a community builder yourself, I you probably appreciate this. Like there is, I don't think there's ever a substitute for bringing people together in person. We're always going to do that. That's always a core part of the community. But what we find is really valuable is that flywheel of like you come together, you meet some folks, you go back, you continue the conversation online, or vice versa. You have a conversation online or you chime in, help each other with questions, and then you meet for the first time at an event and you continue to build that. Yeah. So, you know, that's a I think a really big part of the community. And and it's also why we decided to build our own software, right? Like we can tailor that around. It's not just a Slack community. Nothing wrong with Slack. We use Slack every day. I mean, huge Slack user, but I think there's limitations to what you can do for a community if you're on someone else's software platform. And oh yeah, we we saw that pretty early on and decided to build one ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Right. Well, you did it years ago now. I I suppose not to denigrate what uh what people are doing now with the with AIs, but you could probably have put it together a lot more quickly with fewer headaches and gray hairs.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

That is true.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, I I do commend you uh uh and uh have empathy for you in having done what you did when you built it uh pre-AI. Um one of the things I uh I believe we talked about when we had our own phone chat a little while ago was that uh you have uh you have a number of employees and you're remote only or remote first, I should say, uh, right now. Uh what's the key to success there that you might pass on to listeners who run their own companies, uh of which there are many, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, yeah. We are, yeah. So we have about 80 employees on the team. Um we are fully remote, so we actually have no offices. Um there are definitely pockets of people in different cities. So I'm based in New York, my co-founder Kieran is based in New York. I'd say probably around 10 or so of the 80 are here in New York. So we have WeWork memberships, we'll co-work every now and then, um, but but it is fully remote. Um it's challenging. You know, I think we we did that intentionally, but at the same time, when we when I left Firstmark, I left Firstmark fully in July 2019. And, you know, obviously eight months later, a lot changed in the world. And you know, COVID in early 2020. So at you know, at the time it was just Kieran and I. We had hired our very first employee who started, um, I want to say it was like March 1st or end of February 2020. You know, that was a scary time for a lot of reasons.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Obviously, you know, we also like we couldn't begin together, like we were a live events company mostly at the time. Like that was an interesting, you know, sort of really, really strange time for all of us. Um, but as we continued to build through the pandemic, we just ended up, you know, building it remotely from from day one. Um, I don't I we probably would have done that regardless, but that really forced it. And it did force us to create some really interesting, you know, culture and and and norms around that. Um I you know, I think about this a lot. I I do think there's some real trade-offs.

Expanding Beyond Tech To Full Teams

SPEAKER_00 19:40

I mean, there's people talk about this all the time. Like I there is, you know, like I said before about events, there's it's the same for a company. I think there is something to be said of getting together in person. There's a lot that you can do together in a in an office environment. And I do think we miss out on some of that. Um, on the other hand, we can hire good people wherever they are. And we don't, you know, we don't need to focus on one geography and we don't need to hamstring people if they want to make moves for their personal life and around. So I think that's enabled us to attract some really good uh good people to the team.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah, as with most most things in life, it's trade-offs. And um, and and not every company will assess the trade-offs the same way, but uh, you know, if you can pull it off, there are benefits to be had, and uh apparently you're doing quite well with it.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Thanks. Yeah, that's it's I think, you know, I think once you if you're taking the founder journey, like building culture of your company is really hard, and it's you know, a challenge a lot of people talk about. I think it's extra challenging if you're doing it virtually. You have to just be really intentional about that, thinking about how do you onboard people into the company, how do you continue to engage people, how do we, you know, bring people together at times and you know, create create space to have a social experience at work that isn't just let's get on a Zoom to talk about business. Um, you know, one of the things we do, which is actually very timely, is um we do an all hands company offsite once every year. Um, we do little departmental things throughout the year, but we'll do an all hands every year. Um that's happening in two weeks uh in Mexico. So we bring the whole team down to Mexico. We've actually done Mexico for this, will be our fourth year now. Um, is we we have a number of uh people on the team that are from Latin America uh and you know, and all over the place. So it ends up just being a good place for us to gather. Um so we'll spend three days together in Mexico doing a bunch of team stuff. You know, we're gonna have an AI hackathon and and whatnot, but also just a bunch of social stuff and really getting to hang out together.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, I think one of the most gratifying things that I've enjoyed uh uh and found is is uh you know dealing with people online such as you. And then lo and behold, I meet you at a conference, legal tech conference in my case. And uh, you know, I I just I just love that. You know, uh I'd say 101% of the time. It's uh it's very enjoyable and uh nothing like that. That in real life experience. It's a big boost to the relationship afterwards when you can uh you know have had a drink together or shake hands and talk face to face for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

I would think that a a number of legal tech startups, if they're not already doing it, and as they grow and begin to accumulate the the resources with which to with which to be able to undertake such an a venture would would like to think that they might even create their communities. I I would suppose that uh you know the big gorillas in the business, the Harveys and the Lagoras and the like might might even be doing it now. I don't know if they have their own one time a year events. Haven't seen that yet, but I expect that will be happening soon. What what's the what's the what's the most important things or thing that that you could cite to people who take a legal tech

Remote-First Culture And Annual Offsite

SPEAKER_01 22:50

startup is doing well and has a number of customers around the country and would like to to bring them together uh either for a one-time event, but perhaps, you know, around the country at different dinners and lunches. What's the most important thing to uh keep in mind in in building a community of that sort for for not just lawyers, but just uh you know business people like this, the CFO types?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, it's a great question. I you know, I obviously think about this all the time. This is my my day, day in and day out job. Um I think, you know, in a lot of ways, I think building community has gotten easier, and in a lot of ways, I think it's gotten harder. And you know, just I'll unpack that. Like I think it's easier in that there is there is everyone likes coming together. It's it's you know, sort of like it's a very well-trodden path. It's easy to get people together for a dinner here or there. I think there's interesting models out there and there's lots of reasons. Um, but I think it's gotten harder in that it's become very noisy. Like there are so, so many opportunities that GCs or CFOs have. They're being invited to dinners all the time. There's conferences, everyone does conferences, whether it's, you know, whether it's us as a community or there's a handful of like really good, just dedicated legal conferences to law firms to events, to legal tech companies to events. So it with all of that said, I think you know, to your specific question, I think you really need to have a a reason and a a need. Like what what whole are you fulfilling, or what are you doing that with your event or your community gathering that is not being met somewhere else, or why are you doing that better? Um, because I think otherwise, you know, it they all it does become a bit of a dime a dozen, and like you're just gonna either go to the ones that you trust and I'm gonna ignore all these other invites, or you know, I'm I'm um, you know, sort of not gonna, I'm gonna tune this out for whatever reason. So I think you need that wedge, right? Like, why, why do you think it makes sense? Not for you. I understand you probably have a good reason why it makes sense for your business, but why does it make sense for the people you're inviting? Sure. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

And and uh is a part of it the sort of letting down your hair or uh a chance for uh therapy to be done at these, is that a is that a part that's played, or is that uh am I overemphasizing that?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Uh that's that's certainly a part at our events. I mean, that is that is, you know, you're hitting on on one of the core value props we've had from day one. I think if you can, you know, what makes, in my my in my opinion, what makes a good event is just the people in the room. If you can bring a good group of people in the room together that, you know, are able to do what you said, let your hair down, be candid with each other, be vulnerable, have a conversation that's honest, you're gonna have a good event. But it's it's not necessarily easy to create that environment, right? Like that doesn't just happen.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Sure. That yeah. So and do the do the get togethers, uh and and I I'm not asking you to give away your secret sauce, but um are they is there an agenda? Is it a mastermind type uh uh uh approach uh or or neither of the above?

SPEAKER_00 26:01

It it is no, we always have an agenda. We do so, like I mentioned, we do 300 plus events, let's say, for this community. The bulk of those events are what we call like roundtable dinners. So these are these are like 12 to 15 GCs or deputies in a room with you know with their peers and with a sponsor. Um we rent out a private room at a restaurant, you know, it's really high-end, sort of like nice fun experience. And there will be a theme to the event. So it might be talking about a specific topic, you know, I don't know, you know, like the uh, you know, some new regulation that came out or AI governance and how are you data, you know, privacy, whatever. Um, we always have a member that is leading the discussion, and we'll pair that member with whoever is sponsoring the event. Um, and so they will come up with talking points. It's not a presentation, it's really designed to be a conversation, but they have some general agenda of like why this topic's interesting, what they think is interesting to talk about. But really, the conversation should go where the conversation goes, right? Like that's just to make sure it get started, that's to make sure it continues if there's, you know, uh if the conversation dies down. Um, but you know, we we try to be, we've iterated through lots of different formats, but for those, you know, we find it's good to try to have uh some period of time, 20, 30 minutes that is substantive, and then if that, you know, then it can turn into social, or oftentimes people want to just continue that discussion.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Gotcha. Is is it Chatham House rule rules that uh govern uh people swing? I I take it that you don't hand them an NDA when they walk in, but uh Yeah, very much Chatham House rules.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

So we always that's part of our opening script

Building Community That Cuts Through Noise

SPEAKER_00 27:40

every time. So, you know, we really focus on that. We you know, because we are a a paid member community, people have to people have to agree to our membership agreement when they join. And so we have, you know, uh pretty robust rules there about confidentiality. This is a community of lawyers, so you know, I think everyone gets that and everyone's actually sensitive to it. But it's really important, like what what you know what gets shared there, like you can take away the substance of it and and but you can't ever share names and who shared anything. And that's a you know, that's a we are very strict about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, makes sense, sure. Um, any other advice more generally for from the standpoint of company building, uh uh that uh you might want to pass on to uh listeners who like you are uh operating company in this case here with the legal tech startup focused community, most likely people uh you know leading legal tech startups at one uh stage or another in their growth.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny. I there's so much good advice out there and good wisdom. I don't know that I have anything necessarily unique to add, but I I'll say a couple things that really resonate with me that I've been thinking about a lot this week that just continues to come up in my journey and on my team. Um, you know, one, MA it is such a roller coaster. Being a founder is it is such a roller coaster journey. I used to advise companies as outside counsel at Gunderson and you know, and and work with our portfolio at Firstmark and all that, and say those words to people, but I never really understood it until I did it.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

But what I think I've sort of learned a lot over the years, and I've learned the hard way, is you can't let the the highs get too exciting or the lows get too low because you find yourself whiplashing just constantly within a day, you know, there's big wins and there's big losses. And sure, if you really sort of like let that affect you too much, like I I just I don't think I could do this for the long term. Um so I've I've had to just you know like try to step back, create some boundaries, make sure I'm keeping measured, uh, keeping myself healthy and and and carving out time. Um which is really like the second one too, is I think you gotta you know, you really gotta create your own boundaries and think about what works for you because uh running a company is a marathon, it's not a sprint. But I think you know, to do this for the long term, you've gotta you've gotta have somehow interests outside the company. I think being a founder, I was actually just talking to someone on my team about this today, like growing up in law firms, like law firms have that culture of you know working crazy hours and pulling all-nighters and all that. So I think I already have that ingrained in me. And then you add that to being a founder where it's your kind of have to do that. Like you can burn yourself out really quickly. Um, so you need to sort of figure out what works, like whether it's exercise or meditation or you know, taking vacations with your family or whatever. And and I think what I've learned is like I have to be very intentional about that because if I don't, I you can easily find yourself just plowing through all the time.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, that's key, the intentionality you bring to it. Of course, I recently uh came across

Founder Boundaries, Coaching, And Closing

SPEAKER_01 30:50

uh uh a startup founder uh outside of legal tech who I'm sure I agree with this perspective, but said uh running a startup is every day a knife fight. Um perhaps for him it is. It is a him. But um, you know, if it if it is like that, and it can be, certainly at times, you you have to uh you have to pay attention to the other sides of your life and and admit it to yourself. You're human. Um you have uh you know your ups and downs. And and uh certainly don't be afraid to get help if if it really, really nose dives for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Uh I I work with a great executive coach. I you know, I'd heard about this for years and never taken the plunge myself. And and a couple of years ago I I started working with someone, and that's just been fantastic for me. You know, I really got different experiences, and obviously I think probably depends on you and your coach, but I, you know, that's been a really just great, great like it is part kind of professional therapy and part like tactics, right? And I think that's been uh you know something I would highly recommend.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, it's not original to me the thought, but the best athletes in the world are not afraid to say, I need a coach. And um, and and they get them. And it shouldn't be a matter of pride that stands in the way of your going that route, that's for sure. Uh Greg, if people want to, and I th I thank you so much. It's been uh it's been a wonderful uh half hour or so uh learning about the L Suite and you and getting your wisdom. But if people want to uh learn more about uh you and about uh the L Suite, how do they how do they do that?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yeah, so LinkedIn, I'm always I'm very active on LinkedIn, so you can find me there, Greg Rayton. Um and then our our website is lsuite.co.co. Um and my email is greg at lsuite.co. So feel free to reach out. Always love talking to to lawyers and their journey and you know, legal tech founders.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Uh good to hear. And uh I encourage people to visit the website. It's a great uh great resource to get an idea of what's going on there. Um Greg, thanks again so very much. Uh you're not that far from me. You're in New York. I'm I'm your half hour by train from the city. So uh when I get into the city, and I do often, um we gotta we gotta get together for a drink. And uh I uh uh I can't say again enough uh how much of a pleasure it was uh having you join me on the pod.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah, I really appreciate it, Charlie. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. And let's grab a drink next time you're in town.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Indeed. 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 focused.com and signing up. Again, thanks.