Christoph Janz

From $5M Pitch to $850M Deal: Clio’s Evolution

Huge congrats to @jack_newton and the entire @goclio team on the closing of the vLex acquisition and the $850 million financing! A truly industry-transforming move, and another extraordinary chapter in an already legendary journey. But Clio is not only one of the most valuable Canadian tech companies and the global leader in legal tech — it also holds several records for the best “how it started / how it’s going” memes and early-days stories. :-) The photo from Clio’s first conference booth is legendary, and some of you might remember that infamous email in Jack’s spam folder. To celebrate the occasion, I’ve dug out another artefact from the stone age of SaaS: a (beautiful 🙈) presentation I created 15 years ago for a meeting with Jack and Rian, in which I tried to convince them to think bigger — by raising a crazy $5M round. (those were the days!). (For context: Jack and Rian had a bootstrapping mindset early on — which was great, it allowed them to focus on the right things, build a fantastic product, listen to customers, and avoid scaling prematurely.) And bigger they thought!!! Thank you, Jack, for your tireless work over almost 20 years (and for still mentioning me in almost every podcast interview, long after my active involvement with Clio).