Billy Draper

Happy Friday! I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my seed fund, Path Ventures (path.vc). I'll be investing between $150k-$300k in early-stage companies that are delighting and empowering their customers. If you're building one of those, reach out!

@scottastevenson @FiveGuys @SpellbookLegal The 5 guys are probably doing the work of 50 guys now that they're using Spellbook. 🪄

We're proud to share that @FiveGuys has chosen @SpellbookLegal to accelerate their contract flow. GC Adam Aberra and the Five Guys legal team are running the forward-thinking legal infrastructure behind a global franchise network that spans 1,900+ restaurants across 29 countries. We’re honored to be supporting them as they scale and sharpen their work with Spellbook. This was a delicious announcement to make :)

@kevintwohy Your design eye

@BillyDraper do not say taste on this website

New Path Ventures branding. I wanted something timeless that can stand out and inspire on its own, and I love the archer archetype and the 'aim high/semper sursum' philosophy. Site etc. updated soon but couldn't wait to share! Thanks to Damjan at Coric Design for knocking this one out of the park.

@kevintwohy Your taste as always was much appreciated!!

@BillyDraper 🏹

@scottastevenson I'll upgrade your swag when I get the chance.

@BillyDraper Iconic!

Today we're launching @SpellbookLegal's biggest thing yet: Autonomous Contract Management It’s the first end-to-end AI infrastructure for contracts The world is speeding up. We are in one of the biggest investment cycles in decades. Behind every rocket launch, FIFA game, and datacenter, lies a web of hundreds of agreements. Agreements are the invisible threads that allow us to work together. We have infrastructure for finance (Stripe, Ramp), eCommerce (Shopify) and many business functions. But agreement infrastructure is lacking. This creates a painful bottleneck on our ability to work together. Online purchases take milliseconds. But agreements still take weeks. CLMs were supposed to be the answer, but were designed in a pre-AI era. AI fundamentally changed how computers can accelerate agreements. Spellbook is the most used AI contract review tool in the world, with ~5,000 customers in 80 countries Now we are expanding to deliver the first end-to-end, AI native stack for contracts. From the moment a deal lands in your inbox, to the day it renews years later, Spellbook’s AI supports teams every step of the way, across all business teams. It runs 24/7. While you sleep, it's reading the deals that came in overnight, flagging the parts that actually need a lawyer, and clearing the busywork that used to kill mornings. Nothing gets handed off between systems or slips after signature, and the intelligence stays with you for the life of the contract. AI for lawyers is great. There are 20 million lawyers in the world, and many are our users. But there are billions who touch contracts. We're excited to help everyone move faster and do more of what they love, by building the best AI-powered contract infrastructure in the world. Get early access: spellbook.com/acm

@scottastevenson @SpellbookLegal Scott you had no business going this hard. And it's settled, I need to get to Newfoundland.

@ankurnagpal Congrats Ankur!!

Some personal news

@bznotes Bilal that's at least 12 seconds of billables. Could be like $3-$4. They're supposed to let you off the hook for $3-$4?! Never!

One way to ensure I never use your services again is to be a law firm that charges me for reading an email from me that says I don’t need additional services from you anymore on a particular matter. 🫠

@pitdesi You should reach out about taking on portion of their portfolio, seems like fairly strong category overlap

PayPal is shutting down its ventures arm. They’ve had a lot of great folks there through the years, but this is the right move IMO Also: always beware when you take money from a strategic that it’s highly unlikely that the person who invested will be there in a few years.

Ironically, best use of AI tokens in film/tv right now would be to shoot a dozen+ low budget projects/year with tiny crew and big vision, and up-level them 10x with AI. Keep crew across projects, recast actors where possible, incentivize with equity. Who is doing this?

$700 gets you in the door to watch Game 2 in San Antonio. $10K for Game 3 at MSG 🤯

@jmwind They're lucky to have you! Insane win/win.

An executive IC is either the best idea I've had or a very public midlife crisis. I’ve had a lot of DMs asking: won't you just step on everyone's toes? Is this a Peter Pan role for someone who doesn't want to grow up? For the record, they might be right. This could flop. But it felt worth a shot. I'm the oldest person in the company, which is a little daunting. My 80s SNL reference last week got blank stares. Three weeks in, this is how it's played out so far... The first thing is being in enough rooms to see across everything at once. I'm in the product review and the sales call in the same day. Pattern-matching across those rooms, combined with my experience, and giving feedback in real time is worth more than 100 board members debating CAC in a deck. The second is that being new and senior at the same time turns out to be a strange superpower. I interrupted the all-hands last week, the entire company on the call, not planned. Something looked off and I just said it. What are they going to do, fire me? Maybe your filter goes away over time, and impatience with just saying the thing. The third is something I didn't fully anticipate, which is how much of the role is helping people get things to the finish line. "No, not good enough, let's take another stab," or "ship it, it's perfect." That speeds things up more than I expected. The best part is jumping in to pair with people and teams on a better version than they thought was possible. And quickly. An on-the-field coach who can ship with the team. People assume the role is mostly about writing code. It's not, but yes, I've written plenty, because that's how I learn. A few PRs are in production and I'm now working on more infrastructure-level tools. You'll see some of my work launch in about 10 days, and hopefully it makes a bit of a splash. It wouldn't have happened this fast if I didn't have the time to own it end to end. I'm sure the role will keep evolving and changing shape. But it's exactly as fun as I was hoping. Were still figuring this out in public, so if you have questions, or suspect I'm kidding myself, ask away.

Any of this sound familiar?

In the early 2000s, Salesforce was pioneering the subscription software business. Critics complained it unsafe to move company data to external web servers, it was too expensive over time relative to paying upfront for a CD-Rom, and it wouldn't be able to manage complex tasks.

Blumhouse continues its masterclass in disciplined cost control, equity alignment, and proper incentive structures. @jason_blum keep running it up - seems like they're not even trying to catch you at this point.

In hot times, decacorns are often just horses with costumes. There were ~37 net new decacorns in 2021. If you had invested $1 evenly into all of them, you'd have ~$0.88 on the dollar today. And if you did most but missed Databricks/Revolut/Reddit, woof. Be careful out there!

Jean-Michel, ex-Shopify CTO, joining Spellbook. Pretty rad. Beyond bullish.

Who are the best early-stage founders in cybersecurity and privacy?

@NWischoff I think about this a lot when an investor takes 45-60 days for additional diligence after a signed term sheet. Slows company down, decays trust, jacks up legal bill. Buffett used to buy massive companies with a single page term sheet and a handshake.

Time kills all deals