First Builders
The First Builders Podcast from The Council dives into the stories of those who go first—founders, funders, and early operators who helped build category-defining companies before they were household names. Hosted by General Partner Amber Illig and Partner Rachel Tsui, each episode brings a candid, practical conversation with someone who has helped shape companies before there was a playbook.
First Builders
Creator Path to Venture Scale: Kristina Subbotina on Legal Automation and Social Distribution
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Kristina Subbotina is the founder and CEO of Lexsy, an AI-powered legal operating system built for startups and the venture funds that back them. After nearly a decade inside the system, clerking for a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit, practicing at Cooley, and advising startups through their full lifecycle, she launched one of the first AI law firms in 2023, serving over 100 startups and reaching $400K ARR in her first five months with zero ad spend.
In this episode, Kristina shares how she's building Lexsy as a full legal operating system: self-updating cap tables, organized corporate records, and specialized AI agents across corporate, employment, litigation, data privacy, and tech transactions, all with a human lawyer in the loop. She explains why AI accuracy on legal tasks sits at just 13.3% without expert oversight, why great lawyers will only get more expensive, and how founders should actually be using AI for legal work without creating expensive disasters.
The conversation also covers what it takes to build a real distribution moat from zero: how seven figures in revenue came from TikTok and Instagram without a dollar spent on advertising, why social media is a permissionless way to build trust at scale, and what immigrant founders building in the US need to understand about the system they're navigating.
We cover:
• How Kristina came to the US alone in 2014 with a full scholarship to USC Law and built a career from scratch
• What a decade inside startups, big law, and federal court taught her about the full startup lifecycle
• Why AI accuracy on legal tasks is only 13.3% without a human lawyer in the loop
• The two mistakes founders make when using AI for legal documents, and what to do instead
• The $11,000 consulting agreement disaster that should have cost $500
• Why 80-90% of legal can run on autopilot, and when to bring in a specialist
• How Kristina built seven-figure revenue with zero advertising through authentic social content
• Social media as a permissionless way to build trust at scale
• Hiring A-players: why it is a long-term relationship game and why you cannot cut corners
• Three wishes: simpler immigration, smarter legal basics for founders, and Lexsy being "that girl"
Kristina's story is a blueprint for what happens when you stop waiting for permission, from the legal establishment, the algorithm, or the startup ecosystem.
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Kristina Subbotina: @kristinasubbotina.esq (Instagram & TikTok)
Lexsy: lexsy.ai
Lexsy: @lexsy.ai (Instagram)
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Introduction to Lexsy and Kristina's Journey
SPEAKER_02Welcome to First Builders, the podcast for those who shape companies from the ground up. I'm Amber Illeg, general partner at the Council Capital, where we invest in early teams solving critical problems in essential industries.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Rachel Choi, partner at the Council. Every week we sit down with builders who are doing hard things in hard places. And today we're talking with a lawyer who got tired of how legal services work and decided to rebuild them from scratch.
SPEAKER_02We're joined today by Christina Sabatina, founder and CEO of Lexi, an AI-powered legal operating system built specifically for startups and the venture funds that back them. Christina spent nearly a decade inside of the system and founded Lexi in 2023. She served over 100 startups, generating seven-figure revenue with zero ad spend, building a huge audience across TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram along the way. We're also investors in Lexi out of our fund too. And I've known Christina for a while and I've watched her build a huge distribution through her socials. We're also very happy customers of Lexi as well.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Christina, we're so excited to have you here. Welcome to First Builders.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much, Amber and Rachel. Small correction. 2023, that was my law firmly. And it was not backed, it was tech enabled. But that allowed me to start Lexi and scale to 400K or R in the first five months. The chief code is that I already started the tech enabled law firm. And like I think it's important to note that when sometimes people see this overnight success, it's it's actually not overnight. Totally a decade and two years of like automating legal um before going all in and building uh the platform and AIA agents.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's so funny you said that because I was actually there, you know, I've known you through that entire journey. And to me, it all felt natural, like it's you know, almost all the same company because you put so much effort into creating that foundation that then allowed you to see the problem and scale into Lexi and what it is today.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for being part of the journey, and I saw your journey of building the council, uh, and it's nothing short by incre but incredible, and how you identify those first builders early on, you truly bet on people before it becomes uh a consensus. And it's very rare.
SPEAKER_02That's what we try to do. So we love that it came across.
SPEAKER_03An incredible women community. I haven't seen anyone in the venture space to just cultivate the group of women who are badass without announcing that this is a woman group. Yeah. I come to your events and I'm like, wow. And uh, we hosted the preceded lunch with Lexi and was the full table of women with one man who was a husband of an investor, and I didn't expect it, and it was truly
The Immigrant Experience and Legal Career
SPEAKER_03a magical moment every time. Thank you so much, ladies, for everything that you do. And I'm beyond grateful for having you uh part of the Lexi journey and just overall shell sharing that journey with you.
SPEAKER_01It means a lot. We're so honored. Awesome. Well, we'd love to kind of just start at the beginning and you know, hear a little bit about your journey. Obviously, uh you shared before you immigrated to the US back, I think in 2014. What made you choose law? I guess when you came here, and then also what made you choose the US as well?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I came to the United States in 2014. Uh, I'm originally from Russia. I came to study law. I got a grant, fully paid law degree at USC, living expenses, everything. America was my dream because I was born on July 4th. I don't know, it might sound cheesy or stupid, but I always felt that it's a sign that I'm born on July 4th. I'm very independent. I should just pursue that and see what is there for me. And right now I'm in LA. I landed in LA in LAX, I rented a car and went straight to my rented apartment with rented furniture. I didn't know a single person in the country. I spoke English, but not fluent, and I just started everything from scratch. It was quite a journey, and I think it's the that's the startup journey. A founder comes frequently an immigrant. Over 50% of founders are immigrants, unicorn founders are immigrants. We come here with big dreams, we don't know sometimes even English, let alone legal. And I think that was my startup journey. I was the founder of my life of this American dream. And I studied law at USC, graduated, worked at uh US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for federal judge. And I actually didn't mean to stay in the US. It just happened to be that, you know, bar exam, then working for one startup, another startup, then another law firm, then Cooley, then I started my own law firm. So the life was built very naturally, organically. And by looking back, I see how each dot is connected, every experience that I've had here. Even my experience in Russia is helpful. I didn't work as a lawyer in Russia, I was a governmental official, and I learned how to build deep connections, relationships. And I learned when I came to the US that law is a monopoly. I'm like, I see a monopoly, but I see it. I can smell it, I can taste it. And when I graduated, I didn't know what can be done. And only with uh LLMs I realized that there is an opportunity.
Building Lexsy: The Vision Behind the Platform
SPEAKER_03Even before LLMs with software, there is there there was space to automate certain things like document generation, but definitely not to the extent that now we have agents, sub-agents, specialists in different areas, specialists in each type of the document, and it's truly life-changing. I think that there is no better time to be a lawyer than now. And my experience working for a federal judge, two startups, law firm, and representing multiple startups, but also venture investors investing in startups allowed me to see a bigger picture, life cycle of a company. How first it's a founder, then it's employees, then it's an in-house council, how different stakeholders come in, whether it's venture investors or private equity, what happens, what exit bankruptcy, MA, IPO, what happens after the exit when the company gets acquired or post-IPO? So it truly gave me that big view and the pain points. And until end of last year, I think 2023, when I started my law firm, it was one of the first AI law firms. So I already saw that that journey can be democratized and simplified, but only at the end of last year when I saw it truly can be completely reworked from the ground up. And that's how Lexi came into place. We are building legal operating systems for companies and investors investing in them. And we try to capture companies at inception just to set that legal operating system, system of record, with self-updating, cap table, data room, and with the chat that has all of the agents that are specialized in different areas of law commercial, corporate, employment, litigation, data privacy, tech transactions that a founder, first a founder, can chat with a chat that is focused on their corporate documents that are self-updating with all of the agents. Once the company succeeds, it's going to be an in-house council, uh, VP of people, C4. And that layer that is legal intelligence, proactive tells you what comes next. That is a product, productizing that journey that I've had as a lawyer in the US for over a decade. It sounds really intense, but I believe that it is doable right now. It is really granular. You need to go in each single document, create a skill for each document, for each agent, and the whole architecture, agentic architecture, in addition to the platform with all of the corporate records. It's truly intense, but now it is doable. You know, five years ago, it was just impossible. And I'm super excited that we got a shot
The Challenges of Legal Services for Founders
SPEAKER_03at this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's intense for you because you're building it, but it's actually making it simpler for founders. And so I love that focus on founders because, you know, even having founding my own venture firm and work with so many startup founders, legal is one of the most painful things that we all have to deal with. You know, I love the law team that we work with, but we actively try not to email them because it's so expensive just to like have a five-minute interaction with somebody over an email. And so, you know, a lot of these lawyers are building, you know, billing like a thousand dollars an hour or more. Um, and founders are very aware that they don't know what they don't know. And so there's just a lot of fear around how do I manage legal because I don't want to underspend and then get in trouble, and then I don't want to overspend and then, you know, put my dollars in the wrong place. So I imagine you've seen a lot of that in working with founders. How has that sort of you know molded the way that you're thinking about Lexi as well?
SPEAKER_03Actually, I'm building, I'm billing at $1,100 an hour, and founders are happy to pay for my hourly rate when they need a conversation with me. But the Lexi platform is set up that way that you don't need a conversation with me unless unless things are going really bad or really good. And you need that strategy and hand holding. But 80-90% it just runs on autopilot, it's illegal on autopilot. And I uh believe that great lawyers they will be even more in demand, they will continue to be more expensive, not less. And I've never seen a founder doubting the value that I provide one to one-on-one. Yes, drafting the documents, like, did it really take this long? But uh the complexity of law is underestimated by someone who is not a specialist. When I was just a junior associate, I was like, oh, like it's just you know, filling out the templates. But no, the more senior you become, you realize in order to fill out these five pages, you have 15 pages of a checklist that you go through mentally. And that needs to be automated while $1,100 an hour, $1,700 an hour, $5,000 an hour for someone who has done multiple deals, who has taste, experience, and who is a trusted partner, it is completely worth it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think you've made a, I've heard you made an analogy before to like sports stars, where it's like you bring in the top person when you want to win the game, but there's all this other work that needs to be done that maybe you don't need to be on the $1,000 an hour call to just like, you know, get a formation document done that looks exactly like every other company's formation document and with tweaks to your specific company. But that's what I love about Lexi. It's like the combination of what makes in-person so special and having that human-to-human interaction, but then powered by a technology on the back end to make it more efficient.
The Role of AI in Legal Services
SPEAKER_03Yes. And I think one of our secret sources is that we have a network of specialists. Some of them are currently in big law. Some of them left big law and started their own firm. Some of them law firms are meet-sized. And we pick the best specialists in different areas of law because the company, as it starts and grows, sometimes needs dozens of lawyers, different law. And we pick the best from our opinion. Uh, our design partner, Silicon Legal Strategy, uh, under Garkanian. He shared his network of specialists with us. It's it's like 25 pages of just the names. When boarded five, and that allows us to be with the company throughout the life cycle because we go really deep and specialized. Everything generic kind of gmoditized now with all of the LLMs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. And how do you think founders should be thinking about like law? You know, I I've seen some of your content when you kind of go into that, but yeah, would love to hear just like if if a founder is getting started, how do should they think about Lexi and legal and things like that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's how I would uh think about it. And I'm a founder myself. Lexi Inc., my company runs on Lexi platform, and we do all of the legal work on Lexi. And here's how my head of product and ops and I do our own legal work. So we have Lexi Chat where uh Irina, the head of product, she frequently populates all of the documents there and she brainstorms with Lexi. What should we do here? What should we do there? She gets to the point of clarity that okay, I want this, this business outcome. So, for example, I want to hire a senior AML engineer, and you type, this is what you want. Um, you're like, okay, how do we hire? There are different ways. Advisor, consultant, employee. Then you're like, okay, how how what's the difference? Lexi educates you what's the difference. Here, you already saved at least $500 just on this. Then Lexi provides some practical recommendations based on the market. If you, for example, precede and you don't have a lot of money, although legally speaking, you have to hire the person as a full-time employee, but many early stage startups hire those as consultants. So you're like, okay, pros and cons, these are the risks. Okay, good to go with a consulting agreement. Lexi generates your consulting agreement based on the form that is approved by a lawyer. These are the two steps that most of the founders get wrong. They usually use AI to generate brand new documents. AI is not really good at generating brand new documents. It's better to use lawyer-approved template that was thought through. Tens of thousands of dollars went into each template. And I'm not even kidding. That's how complex they are. So instead of generating a brand new document, start with a template from your lawyer. Then instead of generating legal provisions because you're
The Importance of Legal Templates and AI
SPEAKER_03not a lawyer, come to a crystallized vision of what you want in terms of the business outcome. And if you give that to model, then Lexi would be able to translate it into legal language. One of the horror stories that happened, our client generated consultant agreement on Lexi using our template. The consultant on the other side used Claude generated 18 pages of comments through the consultant agreement. That consulting agreement ended up being $11,000 because we were negotiating. Undoing, and we were not, we we couldn't figure out what he actually wants versus Claude convinced him that he's been taken advantage of. Yeah. He ended up being forced to hire a lawyer because his AI couldn't pick up the revisions that we made. So three weeks, $11,000, while it should have been literally $500. It was a very standard consulting agreement. But the this is the bad use of AI. The good use of AI, as I said, you get a clear picture on the business outcome, you use a template. And if it's an important agreement, I always recommend send to a lawyer on Lexi Chat. It's actually literally a button. You chat, chat, chat, you generated a document, and then you press the button, send to a lawyer. It summarizes the chat. You can attach the full chat, you can attach to your document, and lawyer will review a red line, not just a brand new document, but a red line showing the changes to the template. That's the thing that reduces the time for a lawyer. You still want to hire always the best lawyer. You just want to reduce the time they need to protect you. Because at the end of the day, lawyers are not bad. They're trying to protect you against the risks, right? They're trying to also save their themselves from liability. So getting that a win-win on both sides, that's what Lexi does. You need a lawyer, AI doesn't replace a lawyer. Good or bad news, but Anthropic recently did a survey, um, not survey, but the audit where uh model is exceeding, where it's failing. Currently, AI accuracy on legal is 13.3%. 13.3. It's incredibly low. With human lawyer in the loop, that's where you get to 100% accuracy. Without human lawyer in the loop right now, it is going to be a disaster.
SPEAKER_02Clearly. I wanna I wanna like take a little side journey to talk a little bit about who you are in all of this. You've talked about AI a lot, and I I have been keeping up with your journey since the early days of La Lace and then Lexi, and even before La Lace, when you were thinking about founding something. And I've just seen, you know, A, I think you're one of the fastest, if not the fastest, adopter of AI that I know. Um, and we have a ton of really AI-pilled people in our portfolio and networks. But just, you know, something will launch
Kristina's Bold Approach to AI and Innovation
SPEAKER_02overnight, and I'll see Christina like walking out of the Apple store with a whole new like iMac so that she can use it and test it out because she cannot wait a week to like let the dust settle with a new technology. So I want to just hear like what in your life like prepared you to be all in like that? Like, what gives you that sort of like bold, you know, presence? Or not even presence, but just like the willingness to go all in and be like, hey, you know what? I'm gonna be first and I'm not gonna wait for everybody else to figure this out and tell me how to do it.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's a dark side of that. I make my engineers cry. Yeah, that is a good question. My engineers are really struggling with me with that because if we're two weeks, two weeks something came out, I'm really mad at them that they're not on top of that. And when I'm pressuring them, they're like, it came out only two weeks. I'm like, two weeks, and you should be on top of that. So I feel like if I don't push, no one else will go at that speed. And maybe that's normal that founders move at the fastest because they're the most obsessed. You're setting the pace, yeah. Yeah, I'm setting the pace. Um and yeah, my team does struggle with my pace, I'm not gonna lie. Where it came from, uh, I think it's upbringing. I grew up in Russia, it's not rich family, not powerful. So I always felt that, and plus, um, my parents had a divorce. It was always like an unstable environment, home environment. And Amber, you like know probably some of my like family stories. So I felt like, okay, they're gonna give me a certain level, but I'm on my own. And that drive, it kind of naturally was always there. Like, what is next? Pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. Yeah, that's childhood that is not as stable as as I wished. But the other side of that is that it gives you ambition and motivation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I get the sense that you're like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm going big, I'm going all out. So that is leave it all on the floor, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03And if you think about even logically, right? In order to be great at something, if you want to be top 1% lawyer, athlete, whatever, the amount of hours you have to work and go all in, you have to go all in. So why not go big if it's gonna take the same amount of work? Yeah, that's kind of how I'm thinking about that. Whether
The Impact of Social Media on Legal Awareness
SPEAKER_03making $10 million, $100 million, so a billion dollars, it's the same amount of work ethic, hiring the best people, it's just what you say no to and what you focus on, focusing on bigger opportunities with big market, and the other side of that, you have to move fast. If you want a lifestyle business, then you you you chill. But here, if it's a venture, uh venture-backed company, it's a big market. If you're ahead of people, no one is doing it yet. In six months, 12 months, people will be doing that. And I'm seeing it with AI law firms. I was, I think, one of the first ones, if not first. I was not venture back and I learned all of the lessons in two years. Now I'm seeing a lot of AI law firms. I'm like, okay, I have maybe six months until they learned what I learned, and you gotta, you gotta use that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And six months, like especially nowadays, you know, that can give you a great head start. So yeah. Yeah, especially given the pace of change for everything. I want to touch back on what you were talking about, just like how that has kind of like infiltrated really how you operate in everything. I feel like it's probably also operated like or infiltrated into your social content and distribution as well. So would love to hear a little bit about that. You know, you have hundreds of thousands of followers across so many different channels, and it's really become a distribution kind of channel for you and you know, a moat for you as well. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about that story and how you got into it. Being famous always pays pays off.
SPEAKER_03Uh, I think if you have nothing, I would optimize for visibility because it attracts opportunity. Whatever you sell, it's gonna sell, whether you run a venture fund, whether you run a startup, being famous is definitely a tool. Uh, it's an asset. And on the other side, that's how you make the biggest impact. We've now we have 41 customers running on the platform, but through my social media, I affected so many people. I recently got a message from a lawyer who quit Big Law, and now in three months, she's making 50k a month. Wow. Although I'm not selling anything to her, but it makes me so happy that I'm sharing my journey. I am selling the product and promoting Lexi. But another effect of that, that people get inspired, they leave the jobs that they don't enjoy, and they become more brave. It all it only takes seeing a person who kind of looks like you, thinks like you, to believe I can too. And I think what you ladies are doing, not very uh not a lot of women are venture investors. And I think you also set an example for founders for women that you know, we are gonna succeed, it is possible. They've done it, we can do too. So I truly feel that
Building a Community and Sharing Knowledge
SPEAKER_03I can make the biggest impact, I think, with content. And I truly enjoy it. It makes me happy. And to be very honest, when I was starting out, I didn't have that strategy, or it's going to be distribution channel or something like that. Now we are more strategic. Now we have two pieces of content a day, like two, three pieces of content a day. 80% is what has worked. All of the hooks were more intentional because it's part of the business. But the beginning was I want to bring value to founders. All of the legal mistakes that I've learned the founders make, I really want to help them. Many of them are my friends who lost their companies. One of my friends lost a company because she didn't sign a consulting agreement with a CTO, and that CTO asked for half of the funding round. It ended up in litigation and the company went down. So it's like such a thing that if my video can get 10 million views and at least one founder doesn't make that mistake, it makes me happy. And seeing how that also translates into our clients, one of our clients came to me around three months before the co-founder divorce. We converted his LLC to C Corp, put all of the co-founders on a vesting schedule, uh, did the IP assignment. When the co-founder divorce happened, we terminated the co-founder, the co-founders, other co-founders who left, we got their shares back. The company now makes 100k a month. There's a litigation that is happening in Delaware right now. We are the concierge, we found the litigation council that is affordable, and the founder would spend probably 200k all in on the litigation. The company is successful. If we didn't come on time from that content that I was sharing, that company would be dead. And now the client does another 5k monthly subscription, and it just feels so good that we were able to make a difference in a life of a founder who is really young but successful, talented, and at least legal is not gonna be the reason why if if he ever fails, it's legally shouldn't be the reason.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, having the legal stuff right should be the table stakes at this point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it should run on autopilot and it shouldn't be the thing that founders focus on because your biggest thing that as a founder you need to focus on customers, product market fit, hiring the best people and making sure that money comes in, revenue or investors. If if something else doesn't come into these issues, you should find a way to uh automate that, hire someone to do
Challenges in Building Lexsy and Lessons Learned
SPEAKER_03it. But unfortunately, with legal, certain things they're so consequential, you have to know important definitions, what matters, and that's why content comes in. I really want the founders to know thing about things like 83B, uh QSBS. I really want founders to make their vision a reality and make a bag, truly make become wealthy uh at the end of that. That that leap of faith, that incredible risk that they took pays off. That is my uh my goal.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome. And what has been just like transferring to like inside of building Lexi, what has been the hardest thing about building Lexi and what have you learned?
SPEAKER_03What has not been hard? Let me try to think about that. Okay, uh, I think different things at different times. So when we raised our preceed round, I had to become, so I'm a lawyer uh content creator, so I do legal work, I sell. I had to become chief product officer and kind of an engineer. I developed coded myself version one of the platform and our website because I realized in legal, if you're not a lawyer, you don't know what product to build. And there is an ocean between engineers and uh and lawyers, and AI understands me better than anyone else. So I just looked in and I worked until like 4 a.m. And it was really hard because at the same time I needed to learn how to manage engineers, and they didn't really appreciate me shipping straight into prod. And the first version, you would appreciate it. Like the first version of Lexi was vibe coded on Lovable. I did the first version, and then engineers started coding but vibe coding also on Lovable because we didn't have any other choice. We had to wait for each other to ship things into prod. We literally had to stay from early morning until 4 a.m., all four of us. And at some point they said, like Christina, enough is enough. We have to move to the production quality. And we did that. That transition was also hard. Vivecoding and enterprise, even like production ready, secure, scalable product is two different things. That was really hard. My engineer,
Navigating the Challenges of Engineering Management
SPEAKER_03he's not a senior, mid-level engineer. He literally started crying and breaking down because there was so much stuff and it was really overwhelming. So, hiring engineers and managing engineers, that's the second thing that I had to learn, and also learn my taste in people. I uh realized that certain people might be talented, but they're not going to be a culture fit or fit personally with me. I'm very direct and it's never personal, it's about we have to shift. This is the timeline, and certain people break. And it's not their fault, it's not my fault. But I now I try to spot early on. One of the engineers in the first two weeks, he said, it's a toxic environment. And I'm like, huh, okay, that is an information. And then I started asking other engineers. And when I'm I was asking them, how's how you're feeling? They like they didn't even understand the question. They switched the topic to, and I'm struggling with this one piece I need help with. And I realized there is a difference in engineers and like in hires. One is focusing on the emotional part, and the other type of person focusing, how do I fix the scene? I can't figure it out, and they're focusing on the solution. So our culture is solution-oriented, direct feedback, nothing is personal. We are very horizontal, we have different jobs. My job is not more important than someone else's, but my job is to push you. Your job is to prioritize, kind of push back, and still deliver. So that was a learning for me. I started questioning myself am I too aggressive, too pushy? But no, that's what it takes to move at this speed. You kind of have to. And I found my people. Now, when I hire, I optimize for that and I accept that there will be an error rate in hiring, that it's not gonna work out. And I let it go in the first month. And I learned that if it's not a good feed, treating the person kindly, direct feedback is kindness and not letting
The Importance of Hiring A-Players
SPEAKER_03drag to the point, then I will be yelling because I'm so frustrated that something doesn't get done. And I think I've also learned it from my clients. We have a client, also now monthly subscription. Um, the CTO delayed the product by a year, a year. Wow, clients could not get the product, and I saw how it was unvo involved, like I saw how everything was unfolding, all of the excuses, the quality wasn't there, and the founder was giving chances after chances after chances. And that's why I learned that I'm not gonna be that. I'm not in that category, and now there is a whole litigation going on that CTO is suing. Um, we have two clients on the platform who are going through litigation. So I make sure I paper everything up, bulletproof of everyone. I'm very direct, what is non-negotiable, where you stand, and I communicate it. Yeah. That's probably.
SPEAKER_02I imagine it's also helpful for like interviewing and onboarding people too. So it's like, hey, this is gonna be the culture. It's not weird if you get direct feedback from someone. And now that you know that about yourself and you know that about like the type of people you want to work with.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So now with that out of the way, I think the hardest thing is hiring A players and when it hurts, not to settle for B and C because it hurts when you scale and you need help. And what I learned as well that hiring A players is a long-term game, build the relationships because that player might take a year to come to the conclusion that this is the right fit, and A-players have multiple options. And even with you, Ember, our relationship took a long time for both sides to arrive to the conclusion that we're for real, and you cannot cut the corners. It takes time for you to see how I perform, how fast I perform, and vice versa, right? I see in you how you treat other founders, representing founders in which you are investing. So all of that takes two years. So my recommendation for founders would be to build long-term relationships if you like someone personally. It's really important to enjoy working with your investor, your employees, stay in touch because life is long. And my way of uh bringing those eight players, I first bring them as an advisor, and then we develop in the relationship, and then when the timing is right, the job becomes annoying, the RSUs go down, something. I'm like, okay, this is the timing to snatch that person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's been my strategy.
Building Long-Term Relationships for Talent Acquisition
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. You gotta wait for that rainy day and just slide right in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like we have one person, I am really manifesting, bringing him on board, and he's like, I'm going through a midlife crisis. I'm like, tell me more. How do you like your job?
SPEAKER_01That's like the yeah, it's always a time to soup in when people, you know, you can feel it in the conversation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. And like you cannot push. Uh so yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02By the way, we're we're now in like an IPO season with SpaceX just having happened, and then hopefully anthropic and open AI soon. But I imagine there will be some other like good moments in people's lives where they're like, hey, I'm ready to go out and take a bet on myself somewhere new now. We'll see.
SPEAKER_03I'm manifesting that. One more lesson that I learned that people who are like a players, they money is important at some point, but they are not there for the money. They have to like what they do and they have to like the people. And about myself, I realize that when I work my investors, uh, team members, partnerships, when I really enjoy the people, it it doesn't feel like work the obligation. I would still want to hang out, and it makes it worth it. And it makes it worth it even when you're losing, something is happening. You feel that, okay, no matter whether I win or lose, I'm enjoying this. So I'm excited about the people who uh who have exits. And if you are a senior AI ML engineer and you maybe had an exit and you wanna challenge yourself and you wanna work on something new and have ownership, and you want to have a culture of direct feedback and just like overall ambitious team, please find me.
SPEAKER_01Let's start building that long-term relationship. We'll definitely add that in the show notes as well, so that people can reach out for anyone.
SPEAKER_03And lawyers, we're also hiring lawyers, junior, senior, mid-level, uh, ECVC, emerging companies, venture capital lawyers, especially right now, a junior, detail-oriented, hardworking, really sharp, and who is really AI forward, does believe in that AI is changing the game? Please let me know. I will also hire you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wait, so I would love to hear what's your pitch to these folks who've maybe been been in different industries before, obviously not the lawyer, but like for the AI engineers, especially because there's so much, I feel like in the ecosystem around legal tech right now, legal AI. Um, yeah, how how would you kind of describe it, especially for someone who doesn't know that world, except for kind of just what they hear about the hype?
Pitching to AI Engineers and the Vision for Legal Tech
SPEAKER_03So, what I do, I share with them vision and I actually show them the product. The product and uh Ember That's what gets investors excited too.
SPEAKER_02The second they see the demo, they're like, Okay, this is real. I can visualize what's happening here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and when they see the product, they realize that nothing like that exists. It's very futuristic, innovative, and it's challenging. So, with that senior AML engineer whom I'm courting, I see those moments when I'm pushing him. This is what I want. He's like, Wow, yeah, this is this is hard. When we initially started talking, he was not even open to be an advisor. He thought it's kind of a wrapper, right? And so and he built um the actual LLM model for one of the biggest companies. He was one of the like 25 people who built that LLM model for that company. So many great engineers they think that only building models is hard and all of this vertical, it's games for kids, it's not challenging, it's not interesting, it's all rappers. But the way how I'm first of all starting that we are removing friction from founders to allow them to scale, bring the vision to life. And people who are entrepreneurial, they deeply resonate with that. They know how hard it is to be a founder, and they usually know that legal is expensive, slow. So they resonate with the vision. Then I'm showing them what legal operating system means with the human lawyer in the loop, how we're building the Uber Black way more, and how we're on boarding other law firms to provide truly top quality advice. While on the other side, for startups, we democratize timing, money, quality, and the whole experience of getting legal advice, it's it's on the platform with all of your documents that live there. It's almost like a concierge having a medical concierge that is with you. All of your medical records for your whole life was there, right? And whenever there is a new doctor come in, the doctor joins, sees all of your records, and AI scanned everything and organized everything and updates it every time you go to a doctor. So that doesn't exist even in medical. I'm dreaming that someone builds that in medical. So when they see how big the vision is, that it is very long term, it is a seven, five, ten-year game plan because of the complexity. I think they start feeling that okay, I resonate with the pain in the vision, and there is a challenge, a true challenge that um needs to be overcame. So that's a combination of seeing the vision, seeing how truly challenging it is, and timing that they are in that they're ready to go. And that's how we hired the head of product and operations. She was she worked at Indeed for 10 years, Irina, and she was advising me for around nine months. When we met, she didn't plan on leaving Indeed. Um, she was just helping Angela investing. And when the leadership changed, the timing was right, and yeah, everything just click, click, click. And although she never did legal, because she was advising, she learned a lot of things about the company. So even if you're not in legal or in a vertical, sometimes it's helpful because you think outside of the box. If you, for example, I'm a I'm a lawyer, so I I do have a certain box, and uh the technical team, product team, they think outside the box because they don't know that the box exists.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome. And just going back to content, we talked about why that's important and what it's sort of done for you, but you've basically built seven figures of revenue with zero advertising, as far as I'm concerned, and then almost entirely through your social content. And really, like that's a huge distribution moat for you. And so, what can you tell founders who are just getting started today about building distribution? Like, you know, how to just get started and put one foot in front of the other. And I'm saying this while you're actually like right now at Create and Cultivate. I think it starts tomorrow. It will be we'll be releasing this episode after it actually happens. But Christina's featured as a rising star of 2026 at Create and Cultivate, which is a top creator um award. I've been around the block for long enough to know that, even though I'm not in that crowd. So congrats on that. And yeah, I guess you know, this happened quite quickly. So, what can you tell us about that rise and like what founders should be thinking about early on?
Creating Authentic Content for Distribution
SPEAKER_03So, first of all, I I don't do ads because I don't know how to do ads. I I'm I'm happy to do it. I just literally don't know how to set it up. But what I do know is that creating high quality content that works, and it's an asset that works after you created it for years ahead. It's that evergreen content. One thing that I wanted to say that founders thinking about go to market, don't think that you have to make content. The key thing is that you have to do that is authentic to you, that is natural to you. And if content is not that, don't do that because people are saying that you need to be doing that. Examples, for example, Naval, when he started sharing his philosophical uh philosophy, right, about life and everything, people were telling him it is cringe, uh, what are you doing? It is not professional, it's not related. But he ended up being the most famous for that. Most of the people know him for his philosophy, right? So it was authentic. For me, I was creating content, and I actually had a fear that I'm gonna be famous, but poor because no one buys from Instagram. So I didn't know that it you can monetize that. And the unlock for me happened when I started sharing my life, the things that I truly enjoy. I love business class, I do not like flying economy for over five hours. And I started recording myself sitting in business class and like eating, doing makeup. I don't know. I think people feel the energy that I'm enjoying. I'm really grateful to be here, you know. For me driving like Bentley, I really love Bentley, I really like Juwagan, and it just like it attracts their attention. Chanel, I think certain materialistic things definitely play the role because people want to see successful people, they don't want to take money advice from people who don't have money. So that definitely does play uh the role, but it just has to be authentic, what you truly enjoy, and in combination with bringing value. So whatever you enjoy, but try to bring value. So, for example, in my content, it's that video with um business class O'Bentley, but I share real legal horror stories and I break down what happened, why, and I give real checklists and templates that I use in my practice, and many lawyers download that. Like I have many lawyers attending my webinars, they learn from me, and then they also apply to a job at Lexi because I give true value. So combination of authenticity and giving value and being visible in certain sense, whether that's your blog post, podcast, uh maybe it's events. Maybe you really shine. Because I know some of the uh, you know, people they don't do social media, but they host really high-caliber dinners. A lot of billionaires come there, and one of my friends, she invited me for one of those dinners. Uh, and that's how I met Naval. I was like, oh wow, these are very non-public uh events. You go there, and that's how she sources her distribution, you know? Uh but I think overall, if social media is something that you are curious, that's my advice. Be authentic, provide value. And I'm very bullish on social media. I think that's the new, that's the new media, that's the new Hollywood. And as AI commoditizes a lot of the things that software, all of the things that you need to do and your knowledge, distribution, trust, that becomes a rare asset. And what social media does, and I'll tell you uh a crazy story. One of my followers made a tattoo on her head here with the Lexi logo. I saw that. And I'm like, how in the world? I honestly got a little bit scared. I'm like, wow, people really take things to heart. Yeah. Well, that is an example how trust at scale works with social media. They see me every day, my dog, my travel, my friends, my business. Like when I record from the bed, they think that I'm their close friend, right? They can trust me. That's what social media does. And every go-to-market strategy, whether it's events, whether I don't know, billboards, you try to build awareness that you build trust. Social media is a permissionless way to build trust at scale. It doesn't take money, it just takes the effort to figure out the hook, first three seconds, what hooks the attention. And it takes probably a year of iteration to know what works. And once you found out what works, doubling down on that, experimenting, and it is truly powerful that I don't need to pay for distribution. I think as a startup that bleeds money, having revenue that comes that you don't have to pay for, it feels liberating. I feel that venture money for me is enabling me to take bigger risks that uh otherwise I wouldn't be able to make, but I don't need venture money to like be successful, to be free, to do what I want. And that is a different energy that you start to emanate. And I I think like overall, social media is allowed allowed me to break from the matrix where you have to have a job to afford and blah, blah, blah. And create and cultivate came out of nowhere. They sent an email. I actually didn't know about them. And I was like, is it even real? I asked my CEO agent, I'm like, what is it? Is it is it real? And they said, Serena Williams, Jessica Albagata. What is it? What is it? And I ask people, like, yeah, this is a real deal. And that's another example that people are watching you that you don't know about. And you put one piece of content and it reaches people you cannot see, versus when you go to an event, how many people you can talk to? It's very limited. Here it goes, God knows where. Mark Cuban reposted my reel and commented. I don't know whether I would meet Mark Cuban. It had to be some coincidence that I would be like where he is. Right.
SPEAKER_02And would he hear like the authentic thing that you had, like in that moment? You know, it would could have been a totally different conversation if you just met him. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03I have a good example, Alexis Achenian, founder of Reddit, founder of 776. He was my client at Cooley. He didn't know me personally, but he uh saw my social media. And when uh I came to an event, he came up to me and said, I know you. You're that startup lawyer from Instagram. So that opens up doors that you just didn't know that they even exist. Totally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, you're doing so much, obviously. You're building Lexi, you're creating all of this content. What kind of rituals do you have to kind of you know stay sane or stay grounded?
Maintaining Balance and Grounding as a Founder
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that is very important. I uh had an energy awakening in 2023, around the time when I started my business. So I'm very sensitive to like intensity. I have to find the time to balance my energy. Otherwise, powerful energy is also destructive. So you have to find a way. So for me, that is meditation, movement that is mindful. For example, yoga, pilaris, something, breath, and movement that are connects, relaxation, massages, walking, traveling, uh, reading, journaling. I journal every day at least 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_02Just how many journals do you go through in a year?
SPEAKER_03Probably at least 10. Wow.
SPEAKER_02And I always come at a few journaling, like definitely once a day.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and like this journal specifically, I put my wins every day, whatever the three things that I'm grateful for. And that keeps uh keeps me grounded on gratitude because every day as a founder, you have ups and downs, and they're high and low, and reminding yourself that there are still things to be grateful for, even when it feels low, because the another high is just around the corner. Um, so that's practice. The moment I wake up and go to bed, I remember three things I'm grateful for. And throughout the day, I record specific uh things. For example, excited to improve emails for sales. That I scheduled three webinars. Last week I did three webinars, and those small wins, small steps, that the vision is big, but it's all small steps. And when you feel overwhelmed with this billion dollar vision, I'm like, okay, just scheduling one webinar. That is the goal. Write in the description for that. That is the goal. So being grounded, grateful, and focusing on small steps.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. All right, we have one final question, and it's a little bit of a loaded one. It's like a three-part question. So it's if you had a magic wand, you can make three wishes. One wish for Luxie, one for how founders think about legal, and then one for immigrant founders navigating the US system. What are your three wishes?
Wishes for the Future: Lexsy, Founders, and Immigrants
SPEAKER_03Okay, let's do the immigrants navigating the US system. My wish is that the visas would be easier. H1B overall, I think for me it was one of the biggest stresses when I moved here. And that legal process should be intuitive and it's just like talking to AI agent, pressing the buttons, and it's all in plain English, that you can really understand the words, and it's not that those long pages of God knows what. Yeah, open open the borders for uh talented people and uh plain English, concise that founders can understand. So that's for immigrant founders. Then the second one.
SPEAKER_02One wish for Lexi, and then one for how founders think about legal.
SPEAKER_03My wish for Lexi. For me, Lexi is a girl, so I think my wish for Lexi is to be that girl because she's that girl. Love that. And uh and many clients actually think Lexi, like they call me Lexi, they call Lexi everyone on the team.
SPEAKER_02So it's a sign that your brand is landing. It's memorable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was once recognized on the street and it was called Lexi. And I was like, yeah, I'm okay being called Lexi. And for founders in legal, don't make stupid legal mistakes that are very costly or could destroy your company. If your early stages, best in schedule for your uh co-founders, for all of you employees. 83B election within 30 days, you have to file it. One founder paid 700k series A because she forgot. Oh my gosh. Oh, best in schedule, because otherwise your co-founder leaves and you're gonna be working hard for two people, and investors won't invest in you. And QSBS, learn what it is. It's qualified small business stock, up to 500 million dollars. Make sure you maximize that. Once things becoming successful for you, learn maybe setting up the trusts so you can get. I personally set up four trusts to get $75 million um exemption. So, yeah, like get your bag and make sure that the company is successful, but you're also successful at the end of the day. Like, do good and while doing good. That's awesome. Well, where can people find out more about Lexi and follow your work? Yeah, follow us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, podcast, and our website.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. And we'll put all those links below too for anybody listening along. Thank you so much, Christina.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like whoever watches the podcast, coffee. But we can grab coffee. You can't gonna do like awesome.
SPEAKER_02I know, watch. We're gonna go viral right before this one. Limited to five people. Yeah. First five. First five. First five. You gotta put a limit on it.
SPEAKER_00First five, we grab coffee. Yes, amazing. Thank you so much, Christina. Thank you so much, ladies. I enjoyed.
The Power of Ambition in Entrepreneurship
SPEAKER_02That was such a fun conversation. Christina's amazing. What stood out to you the most from the conversation?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she's great. Um, I think the big one was when she just talked about, you know, working hard. And you're gonna be working so hard if you're a founder anyway, whether you're trying to aim for 10 million, 100 million, or a billion. So why not really just go for that big goal? Um, and so I love that, obviously. And then the second thing that was really big was just like the impact that she's had through social media and content creation and how customers are almost like a secondary, I mean, if not maybe just parallel effect for her. But yeah, I think those were like the two main things that really stuck out from the conversation with Christina.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm so like curious to see where, like, obviously, there is the immediate gratification of like the social distribution is leading to customers today, but I think there's gonna be second and third order effects that she can't even and we can't even guess or visualize in this moment today. And it just kind of reminds me of the early days of the Council Angels, our operator angel community, which was just sort of a grassroots thing, you know, similar to how social is what she enjoys and loves and puts time into. This was also like a passion project for a friend of mine and myself. And at first it was like, should let's just do it because people want to angel invest together and we're all trying to figure it out together. And then later it was like, should this be a part of the venture firm? Should it not? We think it could be useful, so let's just do it. And now looking back, it's like, wow, that led to founders in our portfolio, that led to LPs in our fund, it led to more co-investors, it led to more and more deal flow and sort of a brand halo effect where you go anywhere and people, there's always somebody from the council in the room, especially in San Francisco. So I'm just excited to see where that goes for her on the social media side and content side because it's it's a different muscle, but it's gonna be that powerful or probably like 10 times more powerful than what I just described. So yeah, I can't even imagine like the use cases. Oh, and here's a new one that she just got the tattoo. Somebody got a tattoo behind their ear. Not that that's like, you know, what she was going for, but it's um it's really interesting to just see like the the loyalty that is developing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And when you're talking about the council, I mean that's how I got to know the council was through the council angels first. And I wouldn't have even been able to hire you. Like we wouldn't be partners right now. I know. I was just thinking that. I was like, oh yeah, that's because I was interested and I was looking out there, and because the council angels had already built such a big brand around it and so many people were talking about it. I I got to learn more about you guys. Yeah. So awesome.
unknownAwesome.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm already excited for next time that we have her on the podcast because for me, like every time I talk to her, it's like the growth, the the rate of growth of Christina is just unbelievable. Like I just looking six months back is like a totally different world and six months prior to that. So I'm excited to see even where she's at in six months and have her back on First Builders.
The Impact of Social Media on Business Growth
SPEAKER_01Totally. Especially since she's like, you know, always wanting to be the first adopter of everything. So yeah, she's always ahead of the curve there. Awesome. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review, share it with a friend, and subscribe to First Builders wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_02And don't forget to subscribe to the council newsletter as well for more founder stories and frameworks that you can apply to your own company.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
SPEAKER_02Bye.