New Zealand lawtech startup VXT has raised NZ$1.8 million (A$1.65 million) in a pre-Series A.
The round was led by existing investor GD1 with follow on-investments from Startmate and Phase One too as well as Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Lattice boss J Zac Stein joining the cap table.
VXT has developed an AI-powered communications platform that integrates with practice management software such as Clio, MyCase, LEAP and Smokeball to save time, capture more billable hours and mitigate risks. It automatically creates and save file notes from calls as well as SMS to a contact or file, also recording time spent.
An estimated 20% of billable time goes unrecorded, and at smaller firms, lawyers can spend more than half their time on non-billable tasks.
VXT founder Luke Campbell said they’d seen their customer base grow 5x in 2023 and annual recurring revenue rose by 30%, up to NZ$1.3 million in February. More than 200 legal teams now use it.
The platform handled more than 2.5 million calls since its launch at the start of the year following an extensive revamp
“In just a year, VXT has changed hundreds of thousands of lines of code – over half of our codebase – to launch a brand new platform,” he said.
“The re-launch has significantly enhanced the platform’s capability. “The new platform sets lawyers up for an AI-enabled future in which practices free their lawyers to spend more time communicating with clients, and winning new business, as software becomes increasingly more capable of performing legal work itself.”
Campbell compared the company’s focus to Canva’s early days, taking courage from their example.
“Canva spent two years rebuilding its platform – releasing almost no updates throughout that period,” he said.
“Many of the changes VXT customers were calling out for were very hard or impossible to make without carefully re-envisioning our platform architecture; and we knew that every extra day we waited would make this exponentially more expensive.”
Startmate CEO Michael Batko said: “VXT is an impressive company, amongst a small number selected for our Startmate Accelerator, and since then we have been an enthusiastic supporter and are excited to back them again with this investment.”
Campbell said VXT is planning to add an AI representative for around-the-clock support.
“Soon, it will also be possible to use AI-powered support agents to service customers in key areas such as client intake 24/7,” he said.
“These agents could even be trained to use the voice of a key staff member.”
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