Necessity is the mother of invention.
Few proverbs are as true as that one, at least in the world of entrepreneurship.
Those who set out to build products, start companies, and attract customers aren’t doing so just for the fun (especially since launching a startup is one of the hardest and riskiest ventures one can do). No, they’re doing it to solve a problem in the world.
And what’s the best way to identify a problem that many people experience?
Easy.
Look around you.
Because the challenges you encounter on a regular basis are probably shared by countless others. But is this enough to put risk everything you have and turn your idea into a company? Maybe.
In this guest blog post, Abdi Shayesteh, CEO & Founder of AltaClaro (and Graduate of the New York Founder Institute), describes how he managed to turn his need into a successful startup.
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Have you ever found yourself yearning for something that doesn’t yet exist? These thoughts are the best inspirations for business ideas, but if you’re anything like me, they come at the most frustrating times, unsolicited and seemingly out of nowhere.
Over the years, I’ve kept a notebook handy to capture these entrepreneurial seeds. Most seem crazy at first (many still do years later), but some are feasible. And when the same idea keeps popping up, there is cause to pay extra attention. Of course, I’d be a fool to try to make each thought a reality and make a business out it, but I have found that there is a proven process (lengthy though it may be) to putting my money where my inner voice is. And this is the story of my most recent journey to do just that...
I was a corporate and banking lawyer for 15 years. I worked in a variety of settings: a global financial institution - an Am Law 100 law firm – a powerful central bank – a boutique firm - and a GC/Co-founder of a groundbreaking fintech company.
In these capacities, I regularly faced the quandary of how to gain or share expertise more efficiently and effectively. There are pain points on both sides of this equation, in large part because the existing solutions are rife with additional obstacles and magnified inefficiencies.
Let me explain…
When I was deputy general counsel at Mitsubishi-UFJ Financial Group, I needed to deal with whatever landed on my desk, so my mandate was almost always to either “figure it out” on my own (and fast!), seek the counsel of a specialist or both. In my view, a good in-house lawyer who prioritizes doing right by his or her one client (i.e., the corporation) does both, if at all possible. So I read everything I could about the relevant subjects, attended seminars, and called on a handful of outside specialists who would often give me a few free hours of their time, perhaps in the interest of getting my business at some point.
There were challenges with this. The most obvious was time. The time it takes to read everything is crazy. The time spent traveling across town (or to another city) to sit in a crowded auditorium for an often dry seminar is an even less efficient investment.
Another challenge was the quality of the content and the format in which it was delivered. Even when the courses offered were in video or webinar format (which helped address the time issue), many were watered down or or far too generalized for my practical needs. And almost all were delivered in a boring, classroom lecture format. It was all I could do to stay awake through these things, let alone raise my hand or engage with the speaker in a meaningful way.
A third challenge was that, no matter what I read or listened to on the subject, the most valuable piece of my process—the deep learning that is only possible in direct conversation—was absent from the readily available options. I am not talking about cocktail-hour conversation. I am talking about getting on the phone or sitting across from the expert to pick his or her brain, to confirm knowledge I thought I had gained or to put it in the practically valuable context of my immediate matter. And only interactions like these presented opportunities for even deeper learning. For example, in a direct conversation, I could request sample documents and explore mock scenarios to test my knowledge. Those simulations (or mock transactions) really assured me that I was learning the subject.
Finally, even with my deep dive approach, there were limits on the number of learning opportunities I could expect to get for free. I did not want to string these invaluable experts along without actually retaining them at some point, but I also could not justify paying them $1,000 per hour for even the most in-depth overview of a subject.
On the flip side, when I was working at a global law firm, as a provider of legal services, I had to balance my time between billing, the firm’s needs, and business development. Any good lawyer trying make rain in “the right way,” shares expertise with prospective clients with an eye toward the day when they will find a more extensive need for his or her billable services. To this end, I wrote and published many articles, presented on expert panels at conferences around the world, and always made myself available for complimentary consultations. This enormous investment of time, energy and money, and, along with targeting 2,400 billable hours per year and keeping up with the important extracurricular requirements at the firm (e.g., pro bono, training, etc.), offered what I always estimated to be (at best) a thin return on investment.
Sure, writing an article or publishing client alert is a nice idea, but how do prospects (like in-house counsel at large companies) differentiate me or my article from a dozen others that splash across their desks, inboxes and newsfeeds in a given week?
Yes, speaking at a bar association conference halfway across town (or around the world) is a good way to differentiate myself, build broad visibility and demonstrate my likeability (at least to those in attendance). But, especially when accounting for the time and expense involved, I was not confident that my target audience was there. Usually, it was a room full of other experts in the same fields, lawyers at competing firms and/or unemployed lawyers. Sure, I made my way into those exclusive conferences attended mostly by in-house counsel, but how many meaningful interactions with new prospects could this introvert (or busy lawyer) really have during the luncheon or cocktail hour (in between the packed sessions)? Even if I took a pile of new business cards from my fancy conference in Dubai, how could I engage and keep in touch with these people once I was back in New York? As an international lawyer, my prospective clients were global, so once the conference was over, I was out of sight and out of mind.
Even as a young lawyer in BigLaw, I found the process of gaining access to internal expertise frustrating. There was no guide or book that told me what I needed to know. Sometimes I got lucky and the mentor the firm assigned to me would take the role seriously, but, even then, he or she often was too busy to sit me down and go through the fundamentals that clients were relying on me to know. Nevermind getting a dry run on a mock transaction. I had to sink or swim and I recall wondering why my success as a lawyer depended almost entirely on luck alone (especially after working my butt off and spending six figures on my education).
Even then, I was determined to create a workable solution to these problems. So I created AltaClaro, an experiential learning platform, where lawyers with deep expertise on a subject use technology to teach practical skills and know-how to other lawyers efficiently and effectively. It’s a place where you can learn by watching dynamic, bite-sized videos and interactive live programing, take quizzes and complete simulation exercises, and make appointments with experts for substantive follow-up discussions. Experts can choose when they are available and be matched with only those they would like to teach.
For example, a lawyer at a firm can choose to be matched only with in-house counsel, while another can open themselves up to just about anyone who wants to learn. The former may aim exclusively for relationship building and client development opportunities. The latter may seek to fulfill a long-held passion for teaching and earn some supplemental income.
The digital transformation of education across other disciplines means that this world I could once only imagine was now well within reach.
Of course, technology allows us to choose our interactions online. But to get where we are today at AltaClaro, I went through the important steps in any entrepreneur’s journey:
1. Confirm that I was not alone in experiencing the pains of trying to drive my own career ascension and seeking a remedy.
Before building anything or spending a single dollar of an investor’s money, I hit the streets and interviewed many stakeholders in the ecosystem. I met with lawyers, executives and legal professional development experts who serve law firms and companies of all shapes, ages and sizes (from Big Law to mid-size and small firms to solo practitioners, from recent grads to retiring partners, and from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups). I asked a countless questions and listened to a trove of answers. My goal was to confirm three things:
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People shared my frustrations
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People believed that my vision would effectively remedy these challenges
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People would pay for such a solution.
I even drew out several iterations of what the solution would look like, added bells and whistles to gauge reactions and learn where they would put their own money.
2. Make sure that industry/market indicators supports the business proposition.
I read every article and research paper on the state of the industry. All of the articles pointed to major shifts in the business that would ultimately increase the pains I sought to remedy and, consequently, increase demand for my solution. The research revealed that the traditional law firm business model was eroding, that fierce competition among law firms was on the rise, that overcapacity and underutilization of partners was a key problem at most firms, and that successful smaller and alternative firms were emerging. Studies indicated that the majority of in-house legal departments are building their internal expertise (mainly by spending more money on courses) to rely less on law firms, that young lawyers at firms were not getting the training they needed to succeed, that record number of law grads were going solo directly from school (often without the necessary skills to practice), and that technological disruption in the industry was commoditizing general legal tasks and placing a premium on specialization.
3. Assess if there are any scientific findings that support the value proposition.
I studied everything I could find on education science and met with educators both within and beyond the legal world. It was fascinating to discover that science backed what I (and others) felt naturally. For example, education science shows that, on average, people retain 10% of what they learn by reading, 30% by watching videos and 50% by attending a classroom style lecture. When they learn within an interactive small group or one-on-one environment, average retention increases to 70%. But when people learn by doing or simulating, retention surges to 90%!
Education research also shows that many people learn differently, depending on the purpose and scope. Hence, the emergence and necessity of customizable, personalized learning. Research also shows that using different methods helps to anchor learning in long-term memory. This confirmed the science behind the platform.
4. Stay true to the core mission, but be fluid to its evolution.
AltaClaro’s core mission is to transform the way attorneys gain and share expertise. We are devoted to finding a better way to learn and designing a better way to reach out and touch your target audience by leveraging technology. How that happens and in what sequence we get there needs to remain fluid. Only after you dive do you have access to the data that will crystalize the business model. Some ideas may be ahead of their time, so it’s crucially important to own the responsibility for gradually introducing them as people get accustomed to the concept.
As with “tap-and-go technology” at the point of sale, which first appeared inside your credit card before showing up in your phone—the latter capability was always there, but there needed to be an interim step for people to adapt to change and opportunity—we at AltaClaro are just getting started.
