The Venture Codex

Participated · Series A · Oct 2024

DocJuris offers an AI-powered contract negotiation platform that automates review, redlining, and negotiation workflows. Its software screens third-party contracts in seconds, applies playbook-compliant redlines in one click, and generates formatted track changes, exception tables, and amendments from a cloud-based application. Several Fortune 500 companies — including Siemens, Dell, FedEx, Toyota, and Duke Energy — use DocJuris for contract management tasks. A company survey of 700+ in-house attorneys and contract administrators found 74% of companies manually review and draft contracts, underscoring demand for automation. DocJuris announced an $8 million Series A that brings total capital raised to $11.2 million and said it will focus on scaffolding its platform around generative AI, expanding customer success, and growing its user base. Headquartered in Houston, the company positions its platform to reduce contract cycle times and legal risk for enterprise teams. DocJuris is a software-as-a-service company that helps legal, sales, and procurement teams negotiate and close contracts with greater speed and precision. The platform emphasizes contract collaboration and aims to 'revisualize' the way people read contracts to improve the user experience for lawyers and business users. Founded in 2018 and based in Houston, the company says pandemic-driven remote work increased demand for tools that replace sending Word documents over email. DocJuris has been remote since before the pandemic, with all but one employee based in Houston, and is hiring across sales, customer service, and marketing. Management plans to grow its locally concentrated remote team while further developing the product to address contract optimization needs.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2024

ScaleIP offers an IP business intelligence solution built on proprietary IP transaction data to help IP teams identify high-intent target companies for patent monetization. The product aims to reveal viable commercial partnerships that conventional patent analytics tools miss. Customers include over 130 IP dealmakers across enterprises, universities, labs, and hospitals who use the platform to license, sell, or decide whether to keep or abandon patents, seek collaborators, and determine patent market value. The company plans to use recent funding to accelerate its ability to help more IP teams monetize undervalued patents. ScaleIP emphasizes saving labor time, generating new revenue streams, and improving patent decision-making through transaction-data-driven intelligence. The company was formerly known as LicenseLead.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2023

Ferretly is an AI-driven screening platform that scans social media, web pages, and news articles to flag risky or problematic behavior that traditional background checks may miss. The company has enhanced image-classification capabilities to detect offensive gestures, extremist symbols, weapons, and other concerning content. It offers summarized reports with risk indicators, flagged content, and behavioral insights for hiring managers and organizations. Ferretly’s tools are used for influencer vetting, by some NFL teams during the draft, and across nonprofits, public-sector organizations and political parties. The startup reports customers in 32 countries and more than 1,000 clients, including Deloitte, Blizzard Entertainment and Paramount Global. Ferretly says it follows federal and state/provincial laws for pre-employment social media screening and data protection. Ferretly provides a cloud-based SaaS platform that leverages artificial intelligence to assess candidate risk by analyzing publicly available sources such as social media. The platform surfaces online conduct and a broad range of risk factors to help talent teams align candidate character with corporate values and culture. Led by Founder and CEO Darrin Lipscomb, Ferretly aims to eliminate digital blind spots in hiring by surfacing candidates’ online personas. The company intends to use the funds from this raise to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The article identifies the company as based in Easton, MD and does not disclose operating metrics or revenue.