Last week we announced our investment in LinkSquares’ $40 million Series B fundraising round. For context about this investment, we encourage you to read LinkSquares CEO Vishal Sunak’s plans for growth, which helps explain why we’re so excited. But first, let’s talk about how Catalyst and LinkSquares came together.

We have been investing in and helping B2B SaaS companies scale for over 20 years. Based on this experience, the type of growth we anticipate for LinkSquares requires more than just adding more customers – it means laying a solid foundation of people and processes so the company can sustain and survive rapid, profitable expansion.

At Catalyst we don’t just provide capital; we help our companies “see around corners” and grow effectively. We look for businesses ready to grow and willing to grow the right way. To be frank, we’re picky.

Which brings us to LinkSquares, an AI software company that is revolutionizing the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution market.

We knew we wanted to make an additional investment in legal tech given the continued momentum we have witnessed firsthand though our current investment in Envoy Global (a global immigration management software and services company). As we’ve noted in our prior research, there is massive growth potential for both artificial intelligence and enterprise SaaS solutions in the legal space, however, the legal industry has always been a laggard when it comes to adopting modern technology – lawyers, especially those within law firms, are risk-averse and tend to solve problems by simply racking up more billable hours. Corporate lawyers, or GCs, tend to take a different approach as they must adapt to the needs of their organizations, driving more adoption of innovative technology to become more efficient across the board.

Catalyst Investors was on the hunt for the right company that could capitalize on this pent-up demand. We went to work to find out what kind of legal tech solutions would get the legal community off the sidelines and finally start adopting modern software. The list was straightforward but daunting. To merit adoption, a legal SaaS solution had to:

• Immediately demonstrate value, with an “aha moment” in the initial demo
• Offer ROI within the first 30-90 days of adoption
• Not require complicated or costly integration or deployment
• Not require a highly-paid admin or power-user to maintain
• Have impeccable customer service
• Legitimately help lawyers do their jobs better

We identified LinkSquares as a potential investment more than a year ago and then started digging in to better understand its differentiation relative to the competition and confirm the company’s value-add matched what our research shows the legal tech market demands.

We learned that GCs and their teams raved about the ROI that LinkSquares provides. They talked about the contract insights LinkSquares offered, which help them mitigate risk – a lawyer’s raison d’etre – like never before. They lauded LinkSquares’ customer service and ease of use. This was more than just product-market fit. LinkSquares was getting lawyers excited, which is a rarity.

All that said, we needed one more data point before Catalyst could invest: we had to get to know the LinkSquares team. After doing so, we could not have been more impressed and we knew LinkSquares is where we would place our next legal-tech bet.

Now comes the fun part: helping LinkSquares realize its potential and revolutionize the legal software industry in the process. Catalyst will be with them every step of the way.

And we can’t wait to get started.