Daniel Van Binsbergen is a former BigLaw lawyer and the CEO and co-founder of UK headquartered Lexoo, a legal marketplace.  Daniel discusses his journey from Holland to Oxford University and back again, to ending up in London and founding his first business. We go into detail about ideation and the process of creating a lean start up, how his ideas of entrepreneurship were removed from his fellow lawyers and how he had to network amongst the start up community to gain confidence. 

 

Having raised £1.5m in two rounds of Lexoo now has lawyers in 35 countries around the world placing it amongst the top 5 global law firms in terms of reach. His aim is to have representative lawyers in every country on earth.

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• Explaining how he came to Oxford University, where he met his wife, from Holland and that he wanted another year of study and fun.

 

• How since the recession his masters would no longer be funded and how there was little entrepreneurship at the law faculty at Oxford.

 

• Always had an itch to start a business from selling candy bars in school to and Beanie babies online, but he ignored that part of himself at law school. 

 

• About 30 he thought if not now then maybe he would not have the confidence to start later.

 

• Hi eyes really opened since become a legal entrepreneur, there is so much opportunity out there for lawyers.

 

• How his lawyers work remotely - one in Verbier who ski half the day and works the other half, he had no idea that was possible when he was a lawyer.

 

• On ideation - what really helped was going to meet ups with people who were looking to be entrepreneurs, developing a mindset that is not rewarded in law firms, there is no limitation to creativity and most of his legal friends were not wired that way.

 

• Moving around between legal departments really helped as he learned how to pick up a new area very quickly. Immersing himself in digital marketing was the same skill, he could learn it in a few months.

 

• Reading the '4 hr work week' by Tim Ferriss started his quest, and the Lean Start Up" and "Running Lean" were the most practical guides to starting up. 

 

• How he started with 10 ideas and whittled them down to three and then one.

 

• On reading The Mom test by Rob Fitzpatrick - on customer acquisition and defining your demographic, learning what is a good question and what is a bad question.

 

• How not to fall into the trap of building great technology before you have proof of concept, on doing it manually initially.  They started with a £15 wordpress website theme.

 

• Started with SMEs - have won FT Innovation Awards now and it is on the horizon of large corporates.

 

• Daniel explains how Lexoo works, how they get paid, how 70% of Lexoo team are ex BigLaw lawyers, they have now serviced over 20,000 projects.

 

• Such a low barrier of entry now and it is highly competitive to raise money for marketplaces, the emphasis for investors now is the commercial business and the ability to dominate a market.

 

• Tech is no longer hard to build so the value comes from deep market insight. 

 

• On the recent launch of their freelance business driven by enterprise client demand, how freelancers are a different group of lawyers and how law firms are catching on to this new way of resourcing. 

 

• Discussing how law firms are not used to building business in a lean, scrappy way that entrepreneurs work.

 

• The future is exciting with law firms such as Dentons and Allen & Overy acting as seed investors.

 

• On how they are building their Australian business and his plans to have a wider international footprint than any law firm on the planet.