WillC

Harvey is valued at $11B. Legora just raised at $5.5B. I built their entire web application in two weeks and I'm making it open-source and free for everyone to use. Say hi to Mike: mikeoss.com. When I got the chance to try Harvey and Legora, I was surprised by how simple they were. A thought came to mind: I could probably build something similar in no time at all with Claude. And so I did. Assistant, project, tabular review and workflows. You get it all without vendor lock-in. Mike offers law firms an alternative, where they own the application layer and aren't stuck with a vendor they're renewing forever. You can try Mike in the demo on the website, or go to the GitHub link on the site to download the code and run a local version yourself.

@RegularAvgGuy Yea that’s exactly what I did - i prompted for skeuomorphic glassy svg icons. Do you think the icons look too emoji like? If so why?

@willchen500 Pro tip: if you just ask it to make an icon it will just use an emoji or make something that looks like an emoji. If you tell it "make an svg icon" it will generally look more professional.

I added skeuomorphic icons to make MikeOSS more visually interesting and different. Inspired by Airbnb’s UI. Got both Fable and ChatGPT 5.5 to have a go at it, got better results with Fable. Have not tried 5.6 Sol yet. Even with Fable tons of prompting was still needed. It makes odd little mistakes here and there. I could have done a mock up in photoshop or figma and fed it to the chat but who has time for that these days.

In defence of vertical B2B SaaS companies, getting software deployed in big bureaucratic enterprises with long procurement cycles is a lot of work. That's why OpenAI set up a deploy co. Both companies also do not have the resources or focus to cover every single vertical in the world and do it well. The two companies also fail often - plenty of OpenAI and anthropic products have landed with a dud and failed to kill off vertical SaaS incumbents.

@willchen500 I wonder if that model nowadays even works when anthropic and openai release every two weeks new features or models that might make the whole business model of a startup obsolete. Customer acquisition and actually keeping them must be very difficult if not impossible.

Running a VC backed B2B SaaS startup is kind of like being on a political campaign. Founders are constantly on the road, speaking at conventions, doing podcasts, seeking endorsements from big brands and logos, asking for money from deep pocketed capitalists, exchanging quid pro quos for partnerships. Does the product actually deliver on its promises? No idea. Let’s worry about that after we win.

@RegadasJoao @abraham_jmb I’m surprised they don’t make an exception for vendors.

@ZachAbramowitz Like assembling a campaign team and then your administration

@abraham_jmb So Harvey lied about fable being on there. That’s disappointing. I think soon you will get nerfed GLM instead of frontier models so tokenmaxx while you can.

@willchen500 lmaooo. but yeah, ofc i would use subsidized fable, but its not on model picker. beside the fact that harv know i could tokenmaxx 100k a month on fable, ant put rogue data retention policies on fable. also i bet all frontier models on harv are set to low thinking mode.

i dont want to see the ant api bill from my harvey usage. i ride opus 4.8 in harvey like nobody’s business as i’m getting assigned increasingly more legitimate junior tasks despite being a summer, since some of my work product is actually usable because of my opus riding.

@abraham_jmb Can you pick fable? If I were you I would just use it on every query since it’s free and unlimited ok Harvey I presume?

@willchen500 🤣

@litigationai Totally agree. Mike will be for the small and middle sized firms that are undeserved. Big updates coming soon.

Legal tech is having its biggest funding year on record, and almost none of it is aimed at the lawyers who need leverage the most. Look at where the money went. Legora at $5.55 billion and Harvey at $11 billion are enterprise plays built for large firms and corporate legal departments. The capital concentrates at the top of the market because that's where the seat licenses and the expansion revenue are. The solo and small-firm segment, which is most of the profession by headcount, is an afterthought in the largest legal tech boom in history. The tools that reach it tend to be the enterprise products' scaled-down tiers, priced and designed for someone else's workflow. If you're a small-firm litigator waiting for a tool built for you, understand that the funding model isn't pointed in your direction. The good news is you can adapt the general-purpose tools yourself. Nobody is coming to do it for you. Except maybe @willchen500. What's up buddy!

@NickJRishwain Yup more than they can afford to

@willchen500 Interesting. Degenerate risk is a good time, I'll admit. I did it in the good old DeFi summer days. But my way of doing it was with what I can afford to lose. Are you seeing people really put a lot on the line?

Collective memory of a traumatic event defines a generation. We are seeing a lot of gen Z / young millennial risk taking whether in the stock market or in startups because they have no memory of the last financial crisis. In China it's the complete opposite. Having just went through the first real recession of the last 30 odd years after the Asian financial crisis, this generation is much more risk averse than their parents. YC wouldn't work in China because no 19/20 year old Chinese kid in PKU or Tsinghua is going to quit their degrees to build B2B SaaS. The concept would be completely ridiculous to them.

@NickJRishwain That too. However I do see a trend as well those are gainfully employed in high earning careers taking on degenerate risk in the stock market.

@willchen500 I think it is a little more complex on the risk taking we see in the stock market. We know gen z / young millennials are having difficulties with gainful employment & keeping up with inflation. Speculative and aggressive risk taking may be a response to macroeconomic factors.

@TiredBambooLaw They are not investing in stocks and if they do it’s gold. Deeply sceptical of high consumption or gambling too

@willchen500 I do wonder about this - is it risk averse to grind your butt off to go to Tsinghua or is it the only option. for all our talk of a K-shaped economy here... theyr'e graduating more people than ever and they've got 19% youth unemployment. They would do fanduel too if they could.

@ZeroMazed They ain’t never experienced a real one not like 08 or China now

@willchen500 gen z sees recessions as just another market cycle noise lol. gotta track those bags tho

Malaysian born Singapore educated because the Singapore born Singapore educated are usually too comfortable or docile to leave.

@SellersCounsel They understand but they are not going to review every piece of work. Some barely review at all.

The difference is the partners actually understand the subject matter and don’t just blindly pass on what associates send

@agenticattorney Yes - many but I didn’t say it’s all or even the majority

@willchen500 Laughed but I think you’re underselling most partners. I worked at a low leverage firm but typical partner was very involved and knew their stuff.

There’s a thread on Reddit complaining about juniors being AI wrappers. But many Biglaw partners are just associate wrappers. They are only present on deal kickoff and after closing. In between, their value add is forwarding whatever the associates send to them or simply staying silent on the CC list.

This is very random but the phoebe gates thing reminds me of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Since times of old, the children of the rich and successful have sought to emulate the feats of their parents, all the while without actually taking any real risks nor suffering the real pain it takes. Like Commodus larping as a gladiator in fixed Colosseum matches, the children of the rich and famous today run make belief businesses whose chief purpose is give them status and publicity. I guess moral of the story is that if you are a successful founder, be careful when passing the reins to your children who may only want to larp as one.