Jason Boehmig

How a lawyer hacking together email scripts built a $3B+ category-defining company. Jason Boehmig (@jboehmig), founder of Ironclad, the contract lifecycle platform used by L’Oréal, Mastercard, Heineken, and hundreds more - never planned to be a founder. He was an associate at Fenwick writing automation hacks for himself… until curiosity pulled him into building a new category. In this week’s episode of The Library of Minds, we unpack the real story behind Ironclad’s rise: • How a hacked-together “admin@ironclad.ai” email bot became v0 • The cold inbound that changed the company’s trajectory • The early taste & hiring philosophy that shaped the culture • How to build trust when your customers can’t afford software that breaks • The poem he reads to the team every year (and why) Jason’s lesson: Taste + trust + relentless customer empathy beats everything else - especially in markets people think are “boring. 1:30 - From Fenwick lawyer to AI tinkerer → founding Ironclad 03:02 - Stepping down as CEO after 10 years 05:37 - The workflow → CLM category expansion story 08:49 - The one-line email that changed Ironclad forever 09:56 - Coding a database on a Caltrain before a customer demo 12:13 - Why category language matters for GTM 16:00 - Trust, speed, and why Ironclad hired a “professional breaker” 19:20 - Jason’s #1 interview red flag 23:26 - Poetry, Maya Angelou, and the philosophy behind Ironclad 25:52 - What makes a company enduring 31:27 - Hardest “no”: churning hundreds of YC customers

And if you have any followup questions, you can ask Jason's Delphi here: delphi.ai/minds/jboehmig…

How a lawyer hacking together email scripts built a $3B+ category-defining company. Jason Boehmig (@jboehmig), founder of Ironclad, the contract lifecycle platform used by L’Oréal, Mastercard, Heineken, and hundreds more - never planned to be a founder. He was an associate at Fenwick writing automation hacks for himself… until curiosity pulled him into building a new category. In this week’s episode of The Library of Minds, we unpack the real story behind Ironclad’s rise: • How a hacked-together “admin@ironclad.ai” email bot became v0 • The cold inbound that changed the company’s trajectory • The early taste & hiring philosophy that shaped the culture • How to build trust when your customers can’t afford software that breaks • The poem he reads to the team every year (and why) Jason’s lesson: Taste + trust + relentless customer empathy beats everything else - especially in markets people think are “boring. 1:30 - From Fenwick lawyer to AI tinkerer → founding Ironclad 03:02 - Stepping down as CEO after 10 years 05:37 - The workflow → CLM category expansion story 08:49 - The one-line email that changed Ironclad forever 09:56 - Coding a database on a Caltrain before a customer demo 12:13 - Why category language matters for GTM 16:00 - Trust, speed, and why Ironclad hired a “professional breaker” 19:20 - Jason’s #1 interview red flag 23:26 - Poetry, Maya Angelou, and the philosophy behind Ironclad 25:52 - What makes a company enduring 31:27 - Hardest “no”: churning hundreds of YC customers

Dive into the State of AI in Legal with us! 🌟 Join our webinar on July 11 to uncover: * Adoption rates * Strategies to stay competitive in law * Featuring insights from legal tech leaders at @OpenAI and @Reddit. Don’t miss out! 🚀 🔗 Register Now: ironcladapp.com/lp/webinar-sta…

Todd Jackson,Partner @firstround on the insight that helped Ironclad land it's first 30 customers. @ironclad_inc was founded at 2015 and it's now worth $3.2BN. It was an AI legal assistant when AI wasn't even a hot. So nobody understood what they did. This was a new category they created. So they had a hard time getting customers initially, one day @jboehmig, Ironclad's founder - got an email which read - "Are you a CLM" . He started researching what a CLM is and replies "Yes". And they spoke on a call about this & turns out this customer was an executive at a publicly traded company & was looking for CLMs and he chose Ironclad because they had automation and it was new. So the founders get on a train and Jason asked his cofounder to code a product demo according to the customer's expectation. And eventually they got the contract. So the switch to CLM with the same tech got their first 30 customers. The key insight was when they were trying to create a category that people couldn't understand nothing happened, when they changed their position to play in an existing category (better CLM) everything changed. So relevance matters a lot.

#AI is set to revolutionize legal productivity—are you ready? 90% of attorneys expect increased AI tool use 87% of in-house lawyers vs. 60% at firms use AI Dig into the full report 👇 ironcladapp.com/lp/2024-state-…

I'm excited to launch the first episode of my new podcast, High Agency! For the full recording of my conversation with @gogwilt and a more detailed blog post checkout humanloop.com/blog/building-… or subscribe to the High Agency podcast on Youtube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.