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As a lawyer and LegalTech founder, Jessica Hubley knows what is likely going to kill a young business. And it isn’t usually a lack of product-market fit that shutters a promising company. Rather, it’s the legal problems founders unknowingly accrue while trying to move fast.
“Bad software and bad lawyers that have good marketing/growth functions have convinced a lot of founders to ignore or completely misunderstand really important stuff,” Hubley told Hypepotamus. That can be anything from unenforceable terms of service to misuse of overly-simplified templates to co-founder disputes that end in paperwork hell. She’s seen some costly errors related to messy cap tables, including examples where founders accidentally added stock grants twice or terminated employees instead of terminating option grants.
Those are the type of mistakes she wants to help other founders avoid through her startup Story.
Since we first covered Hubley and Atlanta-based Story LLP in late 2023, the firm has evolved into a robust LegalTech platform and AI-native law firm. Its Aegis software ingests the “mess” of documents founders typically keep scattered across folders and Word docs.
By uploading zip files or raw documents, Aegis automatically organizes a founder’s legal life, creating a smart data room and a cap table built directly from the source documents without the need for manual entries.
“We’ve been working on lawyer-designed automations to turn your mess of legal documents into 1) A cap table that’s more accurate than Carta with 100% less founder work, 2) A smart, diligence-ready data room founders don’t have to pay lawyers to use, and 3) Legal process automations that check for key compliance data in your files like a lawyer would,” she added.
Working alongside the AI software platform, Story has over 3,000 specialists, from 65 law firms, that are part of the Attorney Alliance. With coverage over all 50 states, the Alliance can help Story users navigate custom legal matters.
“Too many founders find out they never did something they thought they did because they missed a step,” Hubley added. “We’re automating that based on what expert lawyers do, and we have the expert lawyer in the loop to check it at no extra charge.”
