Battle Scars of a SaaS Leader
Understanding the stories of resilience, strategy, and leadership is essential for success in the competitive sales world.
James will uncover the raw and unfiltered real-life experiences of sales Leaders, exploring the ups and downs and lessons learned in the high-pressure sales world.
Battle Scars of a SaaS Leader
Why Are So Many Lawyers Starting AI Businesses?
If you’ve ever wondered how a vertical SaaS company decides where to go next, this conversation offers a rare, inside look.
James Bergl sat down with Ronnie Gurion, Clio’s COO, to map the choices behind global expansion, from why Australia became the APAC beachhead to how legal market nuance reshapes the usual “copy-paste” playbook.
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Host & Guest
➡︎ James Bergl (The Gentle Giant)
➡︎ Ronnie Gurion
Videographers/Editors: Romain Pondard/Klippable
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➡︎ https://www.klippable.com/
The industry is all we bring in to help them just be much more efficient.
SPEAKER_04:The question becomes is it not gonna affect the staffing of the industry? No one knows exactly how that's gonna transpire, but I guess we're gonna believe it.
SPEAKER_03:Incredibly excited to be joined by Ronnie Gurion, the chief operating officer of Cleo, which is one of the powerhouse legal tech firms that is dominating not just the US markets, but the EMEA and now Australian markets. Ronnie, thank you for coming all the way from California to join us on our podcast today.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03:It's a pleasure to have you here. And uh and and legal tech and reg tech is something that's been on my mind recently because it's been a sector that I see is um is booming. Um there's a lot of interest, it's a lot of growth. So really keen to dive into a number of different areas of uh of how Cleo has built themselves to be such a powerhouse. But before we jump in, you know, we were chatting before, you've been to Australia, or coming to Australia for the last 20 years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Australia is a um, I've been in Australia for 13 years. I love it. This is home for me now. But what would you say is the most unexpected, pleasant thing about doing business in Australia?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, uh well, I'm just blown away by the country every time I come here. It's just such a modern, vibrant, dynamic uh environment. You know, I think you guys are really among the most fortunate kind of countries to be in. I traveled around the world for for personal and for work. And uh every time I come here, I I just have so much admiration for uh the market here. I'd love to live here at some point in the future, but uh it's great to visit in the meantime.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I agree. I mean the the only problem with Australia, it's so far away. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's um you know, my my my folks live over in Bermuda, and it takes me over 30 hours to get home. But yeah, the um I think the closest US airports are about 14 hours away. So yeah, it's a trek. Lots of jet lag when you come. Um you you've had a really successful track record of of growing and scaling go-to-market operational strategy teams for technology businesses. Um one of the questions that um I've got for you, and I think about when it comes to international expansion, is how how do you and how does Clio think about expanding internationally? And like what what do you think needs to be in place for an organization to expand? And and what was it that made Australia an attractive market for you to head into? I think two years ago.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Oh man, that's a good question. I I think it's really different for uh different businesses. And I and I think I've seen examples of some companies that just kind of wake up and decide, hey, we're gonna go international and we have we're flush with money. And all of a sudden I remember seeing some examples back in and some, I won't name names, but some some high-flying companies that kind of petered out. But you you go to their career site and you'd see that they're hiring country managers in like 50 different countries simultaneously. And it was just like, hey, we're gonna put a few people in almost every market of of of you know moderate importance, and and we're just gonna kind of go for it. And that rarely works. Um and you know, alternatively, you want to go fast enough and and show some heft because it's hard. It's hard to scale internationally when you're a US or North America-based company, for example, and you want to go international. Uh the key question I think is at what size and scale do you start to do that? Clio actually waited a fair bit before really going international. Most leading SaaS companies, you look at public SaaS companies, you know, anywhere. Well, there's a wide range. Um, but I think the the benchmarks show about 25 to 35, 40 percent of revenue for for at least US public SaaS companies will come from international markets. And we we were much less than that um for a long time. We just had so much, so much opportunity in the US and Canadian market. Um, but over the last four years or so, we've really put more emphasis into uh AMIA, first of all, and then like you said, about two, two and a half years ago, moving into Australia, but really APAC, but but Australia as the hub for APAC offices. Legal's a little bit different, but you have to know the nature of the business, obviously. Um because the legal, the nuances of the legal market and the regulations and the way that legal work gets done is not as extensible as some consumer apps or some more horizontal SaaS solutions where you can generally just take that product out into the world. So we have to be you know very choiceful around where we go. But in in Australia, it is one of the most tech adopted societies on the planet, if not the the, I think number one in a lot of uh surveys. And in legal tech, that's very much the case. We see in our category legal practice management, uh, Australia has historically been really uh highly adopted, but we were just not focused on the market. So we knew there was a big opportunity to come to this market. It is a lot of adoption, but underserved from not a lot of competitors. So yeah, we put a small team here in the last uh couple years and it's done really well. We've grown it, I think doubled in size each of the last couple of years. We're up to about 30 people now, and we've seen great reception and a lot of pulling of customers. We had customers finding us organically, which gave us a lot of other uh belief that if we came here in the more intentional way with local teams, local marketing, and some customization on the product side, we we would be successful. But um yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it and I think culturally Australians are the sort of people that will I'll give it a go. Yeah. Um yeah, I'll give this a go. And they don't necessarily have to go through massive due diligence, so it's a really good test ground um for the Asia Pacific market as a whole. Um and that that was one of my questions, was it was it a push or pull? So it sounds like you were getting quite a lot of interest from Australian legal firms um pulling you in here.
SPEAKER_04:That's it was both. You know, Clio has had a track record of a lot of success in North America, but we were getting to a certain scale, and I joined there about four years ago, where I kind of felt, hey, uh we need to diversify our, like any business, we have to diversify our paths to revenue. We we we can't be as single-threaded um as what's got us here to this stage. We were probably approaching uh, you know, 150, 200 million dollars of ARR. And so you're trying to grow that at a nice clip. Uh, you you you need to really think about how you get there. Uh, and in addition to continuing the success in North America, we started to say we international expansion was one of a handful of levers that we really were quite intentional about. And uh it's been a great, it's one of the fastest growing parts of our business, international markets right now. We've we've really scaled AMIA, uh, launched here in Australia. And uh we we we do have this organic pull. So that was the push where we said, hey, let's push into these markets in a more intentional way. Let's put teams on the ground, let's put marketing effort, let's build brand, let's do all these things. But we also have pull because we have customers in about 120 countries that do come up and sign up on Clio. And so we look at where the spikes are coming from organically. Um, and then that gives us good data to know because we're a high velocity business, SMB, there's there's tens of thousands of customers, we can see what's which markets are showing that latent demand that we can go cultivate. And so we're kind of constantly looking at which markets make sense to go into next.
SPEAKER_03:And you said that last year alone, Clio hired about 500 people globally, which is an enormous number for the yeah, I guess the growth stage that you're at. What do you put that growth down to? Um, are we talking about just absolutely nail product market fit? Are we talking about like regulations changing? Like, is there something in the market that is causing that growth? Is it a bit of both?
SPEAKER_04:There hasn't really been regulatory shifts. It's more of uh, you know, the legal industry historically has been less tech adopting than other industries because it is a really SMB-oriented business. Uh, in the US, for example, um half of all lawyers work as solo practitioners for themselves. About 80% of the market works for firms that are 10 or less. So it's it's small businesses and they're they're busy, right? They're they're they're trying to serve clients well and run the business and deal with staffing and deal with payroll. And uh they want to use tech sometimes, but it's just not as much of a priority. And so historically, it's been a little bit of a tech laggard. But what you see is uh, especially with AI now, there's just an increasing realization that if you're not adopting technology as a law firm, you are going to be uh left behind, but you're gonna you're gonna struggle to to compete. Um, most surveys talk about legal as being one of the top two or three industries that will be impacted by AI. And so there's a general trend in tech in legal legal industry to adopt technology. Software, spending on software is by far the fastest growing spend category for for legal as a whole. It's just catch-up effect, if you will. And then AI has kind of exacerbated in the last couple of years. And then, you know, Clio has a ton of value. It's it's a pretty reasonable price point for really uh uh an entire system to run your law firm from CRM, intake, all your case management, document management, billing payments. So it's it's an it's the nerve center of the firm. And I think uh people are just looking for a great solution that um can fill that need and make their lives easier. And our reputation is kind of growing. The other thing is this is referral network because lawyers are pretty risk averse. Uh, they want to make sure they're using solutions that are really bespoke for the legal industry because if they mess up, they can affect their licensure and and their livelihood. So as we have established ourselves, there's this huge virality and referral aspect, and that's been another accelerant.
SPEAKER_03:I want to touch a little bit on go-to-market, um, the motion, the team that that you've built and structured, and then also kind of tie that a little bit into the culture of the organization. Um, because I I think there is a there is an interlink between the two. But what is the um, I guess what is your go-to-market motion? Is it is it like marketing led, product-led, sales-led?
SPEAKER_04:Um it is primarily marketing and sales led, uh, hand in hand. We have not done a lot of traditional product-led growth, although we're starting to do more of that, um, especially as we get more multiple products. Uh when you look at, we're in a category called vertical SaaS, so SaaS for a particular uh vertical or industry. And like I said, it's a real, it's a it's a ERP, if you will, for a law firm. So it's a you know, if the two of us are running a law firm and we're choosing a uh software in our category, it's it's how we run the firm, how we're gonna get paid, how are we serving our clients, our livelihood is at stake. That and that's true of a lot of vertical SaaS software. It's usually the most important software that that vertical is choosing, and it's the entire business operation. So that lends itself to not being very likely to be PLG oriented. Even if it could be sold that way, most small business owners are going to want to at least talk to the firm, ask some questions before putting their whole livelihood at stake. So from my research and just being at other vertical SaaS conferences, uh, almost every vertical SaaS company that I know of uh does not really embrace PLG as the primary motion. I think once you land with a single product and now you have a suite of products, that's where PLG can kind of help expand the value of that customer over time. So we are more marketing and sales led and a lot of inbound. We have a great brand, and um the company has done a really great job of building awareness and and has a great reputation. So we do have a really healthy inbound motion, but we've amplified a lot of outbound activities over the last couple of years just to drive further growth. Uh when I got there, it was probably 90% inbound.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:Um, and we've uh you know continue to maintain that, but but now probably um, you know, a much bigger portion of our business comes from outbound because we just have to develop those additional growth channels. So a lot of BDRs, a lot of you know, outbound activities.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And it sounds like the the it's working, you know, the the growth that you've had, the success, the revenue that you're driving, the the investment interest in the organization. Um when you look at international expansion and you're going into different markets with different cultures, uh, how do you maintain the core culture components of the organization? Um, and even perhaps you could share what you know, if you would describe the culture of the organization, what that looks like as well.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, look, I feel very lucky to be a Clio. Uh we're about a 17-year-old company I joined four years ago. And Jack, our founder, we're still founder-led, um, he has been very intentional about creating uh a really strong culture from the get-go. We invest a lot in it. I would say it's a customer-obsessed, product-first, uh, employee-centric culture. Uh we can make a lot more money if we wanted to. I always say, like, if if a PE firm got their hands on Clio, they would make some choices to really dramatically change. But we're doing very well and we're comfortable with our financial results. But it's not short-term. It's really about investing in the long term. And we talk about trying to build a hundred-year enduring company. So that that North Star is important. It's not short-term orientation, it's really thinking decades into the future in terms of the vision, the product, and then the culture that you need to orient around that. So we invest a lot in our culture, not just money, but time and energy. And there's a lot of passion and a lot of uh, you know, a lot of companies try to say we have a mission-driven culture, but but Clio really uh embraces that. And uh, you know, as a result, I think we've got a very engaged uh employee culture. I think the other thing is growth. Growth helps things so much because you get people, most people will want to have opportunities to take on new assignments, new learnings, career progression. And when you come to a company where that's very much the path we're on, you see people who can get you know multiple promotions, go from I see BDR out of school to first-time manager to now leading a division to maybe being a country leader. Um and there's dozens or hundreds of those examples. So it's a really growth-oriented mindset. And we like to remote from within as much as we can. And uh the other thing I'll say is we're really intentional about things like our compensation uh approach in terms of our bonus structures. How do we make sure that we're not creating self-interest? I think that's a culture killer. I've worked at a lot of companies that, as they scale, now you have different business units, different leaders, different product lines. And do you create incentives where, okay, everybody has got uh very micro optimization? And there's benefits to that. You can say, hey, this person's gonna drive this particular part of the business the best if we really tightly metric them and their bonus, let's say, on this. Uh, the counter to that is you can create this silo or internal friction culture. So the opposite approach is you kind of say, hey, we can manage that through KPIs or through performance management. But from a compensation perspective, we're going to align more people towards a few company-wide objectives. So everybody's thinking and operating more like a CEO, more like uh senior executives, uh, towards a common output. And so that's kind of where we orient. So there's intentional decisions, you think about that, that have major implications on the culture.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's really interesting. And as you're talking there about culture and mission-driven and doing what's right, it takes me back my my time at DATO. I remember a couple of the values that we had in the organization. One was um beg for forgiveness, not permission, um, which I thought was really fun at a similar stage. Like they were around series series D at that point. And um the other one, which which I remember and is really important for me in business, is do what's right over what's profitable. And it meant that if you needed to spend money um to make something right, uh, if there was a mistake, then you you you had the autonomy to do that, and and that was encouraged as well. So um that I think that definitely creates an incredible culture of of growth and and earning potential as well. Just to um just to stay on this particular topic of talking about the sorts of um people that you want in, you mentioned their growth mindset is is important. When you're looking at, and I'll say international expansion, let's say that as you're looking to grow your team here in Australia, you're looking for care, I'm guessing characteristics, maybe experience. From your experience, are there certain types of people, salespeople, leaders, operators that you think will be successful or not successful for either the culture within Clio or the stage of business that you're at today?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we're in a really I I love the stage of company that we're at. We're around 1600 people right now. We have a global reach. Um, there's a lot of impact you can have on the industry and and on the industry as a whole, but we're still small enough that every single employee really does make a difference uh to our results. Um and so what I look for when I hire leaders, and not just here, but even in other roles, because I've been at really hyper-scaling companies for most of my career growing 50, 100% type situations, is you I look for people who have operated at scale but really want to get their uh you know their their hands dirty. Everybody says, Oh yeah, I like to get my hands, you know, you're a recruiter, right? You're in in the search space. So uh, you know, when you're interviewing people, you're always trying to parse through and really get it the heart of it because people will tell you kind of what they think you want to hear. So everybody thinks that, oh, I'm a detonated person or I like to get my hands dirty, but you have to really look for the signals because when you're building, building from scratch or building these hypergrowth and new new areas, um, you need leaders who are gonna go really, really deep and um put their imprints on it and set it up for success and then uh but know the vision, nobody needs to go so that as it starts to take hold and you you build the teams, yeah, they're not micromanagers. So it's not we're not looking for micromanagers, we're looking for people who are strategic and and scale leaders, yeah, but know when and uh how to go deep to set things up the right way, and it's in their DNA. And I think those are like the leaders that create gold, in my experience.
SPEAKER_03:How do you assess for that? Because you're right, like that is what you need, and everyone says that they do that, but very few can.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I think you pick it up when you start going into the details of their experience. Yeah. Um how much detail do they give you about how things were set up? Uh people light up, you know, they just they just and we give people case studies too. I think that's a good example. Uh generally, people really uh some people go really, really deep and with a high degree of uh preparation and detail orientation and prep. I think those are good signals. But but ultimately it's it's it's an art. Uh you can't really assess it through a a test or anything like that. Um but I think through experience you can figure out who's a good talker or uh who knows how to kind of describe high-level maybe what happened at a company versus who really was in the the throes of it and who who gets energized by by talking about how they might uh do that in your company in the role you're looking for. So it's a little bit more art than science, but I think there's pattern recognition and and signals. And like I said, when I think about the best hires who've transformed parts of Clio and parts of companies that that I've been in in the past, it's uh they all have that characteristic.
SPEAKER_03:And do you look for people that have uh you mentioned stage of business, they've scaled a business. So are you looking for the skill set of they're in the weeds, but they've got strategic, or do you need them to have particular experience in the same sector or same sort of like vertical SAS?
SPEAKER_04:Um we generally historically have not focused that much on hiring from within the legal technology industry.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um in our next iteration of our company as we're moving into more AI-oriented solutions that are now not just in what we call the business of law, like how to run a law firm, but also using AI to say, okay, let's help the lawyers actually draft documents, actually file cases, build arguments. So leveraging a lot of the data that exists in our legacy kind of vertical SaaS platform and combining it with uh new capabilities we've bought through this company called B-Lex into actually using technology to practice law. That is changing the dynamics of the type of profile we need, and and we need more people with legal backgrounds and legal technology backgrounds. But historically, I would say we have not said or felt that you need legal technology to be successful. We're more of a general software company by uh in our legacy. And so we're really looking for you know, to go to market level, a lot of times it's it's it's it's it's some entry-level folks for for junior salespeople or um SDRs or BDRs. And so there you maybe look for someone who has a couple years of experience uh at another SaaS company who who is looking to join a company that's really scaling. Um and at the leadership level, I do think we look for people who have worked in vertical SaaS and it uh bring that pattern recognition where we can find it because there's a lot of playbooks and a lot of similar things that we're trying to execute on in terms of buying multi-product, going international, um, and then also just the expansion piece of it. We we just we we we bring in many thousands of new logos a year. And as we've gotten bigger and gotten a much more broad product portfolio, going back to the base and and upselling and cross-selling has become a major growth factor for us. So people who come from companies with that sort of scale and that sort of historical growth trajectory, and they bring that experience to help figure out how we can bring that to Cleo, is what we look for. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I want to touch a little bit on AI. Um, you mentioned it, and I've heard this as well. One of the major verticals or sectors being impacted by AI is the legal sector and the amount of people that go on and ask Chat GPT um some legal questions. I think that's going to replace their the lawyer. Yeah, there's there's always a place, in my opinion, for professional services that know what they're doing as opposed to just purely AI, but but but I think it is a threat. Like, what is your your perspective of the the threat or the opportunity for the industry as a whole? And what is Clio doing to support or partner or enable your customers?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um well, we're using AI in lots of different ways. So, first of all, our customer is the uh legal professionals, not rather consumer-oriented legal technology company. There, there's there are certainly some of those, but but we're really a B2B company. So we service uh lawyers and paralegals and their office staff. And so, how do we bring AI in to help them just be much more efficient and more productive? And if you think about the administrative burden that exists, it's a very paper-based and a very specific profession, a lot of deadlines, a lot of procedures, um, a lot of uh documents and forms and things of that nature. So it's a perfect example where AI can uh really help streamline and allow a lawyer to be spending much more of his or her time on higher value tasks. So we've launched a series of um AI assistants to sit on top of our core platform that will really uh be almost like an extension of that lawyer's practice. And they can do intake more seamlessly, they can do billing. Billing is a real big pain for a lot of lawyers to have to chase through. They don't have billing departments if you're an SMB. Uh as you scale, obviously they have more proper billing departments, but for small lawyers, it's something that they have to do. And so AI can uh seamlessly kind of prepare and automate a lot of the time and entries into bills that they can then review and approve. So we're bringing a lot of AI capabilities just to help the efficiency and allow and free up time for for lawyers. Uh then the question becomes well, isn't gonna is it is it not gonna affect the staffing of the industry? Is there gonna be less of a need for junior lawyers because a lot of this work, a lot of the more mundane or more entry-level parts of legal apprenticeship and legal training are gonna get done by AI. And like no one knows exactly how that's gonna uh transpire, but I guess our our belief is that what you're going to see is is this shift from more routinized work that that has kind of been a uh an aspect of the legal industry will get done more by technology, and that that'll open up a lot more time to do more strategic consultation, more you know, processing of that output. And there's a lot of examples of that when you look at previous technologies or people thought, oh, this is gonna spell the end of the accounting industry or the end of you know such and such industry. But what happens is a lot of the work gets done by tech, and then a lot of whole new avenues of value get get performed.
SPEAKER_03:Are you seeing trends in the sector where potentially there's a new generation of law firm that's coming forward that's actually much more AI first and tech first?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, absolutely. Um the other thing I'll just say on that is uh World Justice uh Institute did a survey. I think they estimated globally about only about 23% of legal matters, legal cases uh get get addressed by legal industry. So about 75% of matters that people would like to be addressed, they they don't end up pursuing uh legal uh cases due to lack of resources, lack of access, lack of uh abilities. And I think AI and technology will also lower the bar. So the ability to serve more people and really improve access to justice, which is one of our core um missions as a company, will happen. And then you're absolutely right. There are just like an industry, but there's so much innovation going on in this space. Um, I can't tell you how many lawyers I've met that have a side AI business. We had a conference here in Sydney yesterday, and there's like four or five people who they're they're a legacy law firm, and they have a whole other division now building AI solutions. And then there's a lot of AI native firms that are being created where they're breaking off from larger firms that with our technology and other legal technology, the ability to leave a traditional law firm and go out on your own and um become an entrepreneur is easier than ever. And we see many thousands of customers a year around the world who who are kind of new firm starts who are starting up on Clio. And uh yeah, some of them are really taking a completely reimagined approach to how to set up firms with with technology, with AI. And those are some amazing customers to work with.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I bet. I bet. When I set up um Bluebird here a couple of years ago, I needed some legal support, but the the organization I engaged with, a company called Law Path, um, they just had a really modern way of procuring legal services, pay a monthly subscription, get access to lawyers on demand, and um all of the paperwork that I might need, and I can meet them for a monthly fee. Um yeah, I just thought it was it was a really cool way to engage. And I I would want to, as a I'm I'm calling myself young. I'm not not not as young as I once was, but like I want to, I'm a I guess a young-ish business owner now that is is wanting to do business and engage with people that are are thinking the same sort of way. So you're you're right. I I think that the the next generation is is um is is gonna be delivering services to like-minded businesses that want to do business in the same sort of way. And yeah, for sure. You guys are at the forefront of that as well. I want to uh talk a little bit. I mean, this is you're you're solving a uh a problem, uh global uh your global solution um for for the problem of administration administrative tasks, you're you're driving profitability and efficiencies into these law firms. You've landed in Australia, the population here is like 26 million. Um some businesses uh that are entering Asia Pacific land in Singapore, and the population of Asia is is billions as opposed to a few million. Like well, what's the rationale for um for Australia versus Singapore? And um, do you have intentions of of going to the the the ASEAN market or or or further?
SPEAKER_04:A lot of what we offer, I think, is extensible to any country's legal legal industry. You know, how do you track cases or documents, workflows, time tracking, billing, those sorts of things? But there are uh nuances in the legal industry kind of By country. And so we look at uh kind of the US and kind of Commonwealth countries as having the highest degree of similarity that makes those natural focus areas or concentration areas for where we have the highest likelihood of success, or other markets that uh do a lot of international law and are comfortable doing uh a lot of the work in in English. So you think about South Africa, you know, Dubai, Middle East, uh, the Nordics, things of that nature. Um, right now, our platform is also only in in English, so that also is important. Now, over time, I do foresee Clio to be a truly global company. And with um our recent acquisition of V Lex, they are very strong in Latin America, they're very strong in Spain. There's a whole bunch of other markets that are coming to the family of Cleo imminently. And um, we're also working on our first non-English uh market launch. So starting in in more of a European focus to start, I think Asia is uh very complex. I've um I worked at Uber, I worked at Airbnb, I worked at Expedia, all those companies spent billions, billions of dollars trying to break into China, India, uh, you know, all these huge markets. And um yeah, it's incredibly difficult to do well. So I think for us at our scale, focusing on where we can really be successful with a high degree of confidence and and speed makes sense. And then as we continue to develop our capabilities and our scale as a company, I do think some of the more uh more difficult to penetrate but larger markets could could be interesting. Uh the question then becomes, is it more organic or is it more through acquisition? We've generally grown through organic expansion. All of our all of our international expansion has been organic. We've not really expanded through through MA thus far. So yeah, over time I think we'll get there, but uh right now there's a lot of opportunity in markets that are just really easier and more natural for us to expand into.
SPEAKER_03:We did a uh a piece of research with uh probably 10 or 12 um Apex SaaS operators uh about a year ago and touched on this topic as well. Yeah. And one of the things that was interesting about the Australian market in particular is that it's a very, very, very SMB-centric country. Yeah. So the majority of businesses are small businesses, um, just the way the geography is spread out, it's a relatively, relatively new country as well. Um, and there's very few enterprise organizations here. So what what we noticed as part of this research that it yeah, this is a sweeping sort of observation that if you're an enterprise organization, your TAM and your SAM is far greater in Asia. There's a lot more larger organizations over there to go after, but if you're an SMB um kind of velocity type SaaS firm, yeah, there's an incredible opportunity here. And actually, you may drive significant revenue and growth just in Australia as well.
SPEAKER_04:And the other thing we ply into our international view is the legal industry, it's not uniform. It's not like if you're in uh a lot of industries where it kind of just correlates to the GDP or the population, but there are massive differences in uh lawyers per capita in litigiousness or you know, likelihood of filing cases. So Brazil, for instance, is the most litigious country, I think, in the world, maybe maybe second only to the US. Wow. But you might have two countries that have the same population, but the size of the legal market will actually be radically different based on how many lawyers there are, how much people um take it, you know, sue and file cases. And so that's another overlay, and and it it uh it's just unique to being a very vertical-specific industry.
SPEAKER_03:A lot of the listers of our podcast are Australian SaaS companies looking to go international. We have quite a few US firms looking to come internationally as well. As someone that's that's scaled multiple organizations internationally, what advice would you give to founders who are looking to scale internationally for the first time?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think this kind of gets back to something I mentioned earlier, which is this whole question of how broad do you go versus how focused you go? And look, I think it depends on how much capital you have, what's the nature of your industry, is it a winner-take all? Is the industry uh and the market opportunity getting taken in real time and you need to go with speed over all else, which is pretty uncommon. But I think about like Uber when I was there, where you kind of have a true marketplace and a brand that's gonna get built, being there first or being there among the first people and and and uh approaching it that way was important. So if you're in a market that is having some of those characteristics, I think you have to go broad and you need to go for it. But I think most SaaS companies are not in that sort of environment. And there I take the opposite approach, which is I think you want to be really um methodical. I I generally think you want to prove out that you, as a company, can execute well on international expansion, and then you've thought it through and you have some scale, and then it becomes much easier to then start to write those additional checks and say, okay, now let's go for this next cohort of countries or these next cohort of countries. So I would say, you know, pick a few countries. Don't try to go too broad, unless you're in an environment like I described earlier. And uh the other thing that I think Clio learned is uh a lot of companies will say, hey, we're just gonna put sales and marketing and maybe a customer success person or two, and everything else is gonna be done uh back at HQ, wherever that may be. And I think if you really want to serve customers well, and and there are local nuances to the offering, and legal is a market like that where the laws and some of the practices and some of the legal regulations in Australia are different than New Zealand or different than England, et cetera. So we put like full stack teams in a lot of our markets, the the key markets where we have not just our go-to-market teams, but we have local designers, local products, local engineers in in UK, for instance, in Dublin, we're and in Australia. And that allows us to just really build and optimize what it takes to really work with customers and win. Because it's too hard to do that from HQ and have them really understand the nuances of all the global uh feedback. So I think make that investment in a few markets, go in there with real intentionality, put in the necessary functions to succeed, and uh and then once you've proven that out, I think it's much easier to know how to playbook that out and and start to go go much bigger. So that's why I would personally recommend.
SPEAKER_03:And uh another question, you know, we talked a little bit about uh AI within the platform, um, and and enabling your your customers to um to drive value in their business with technology. How do you, as the business is scaling as a COO of a 1600-person organization, keep a continuous like feedback loop between what's happening in on the field, what's happening in the executive team, and with all of the noise being thrown at everyone from like AI and I call it shiny, shiny toys that distract people. How do you sift through what's important, what's not to make sure that you are at the forefront of the meaningful um product innovations um for your business, but also your your go-to-market motion?
SPEAKER_04:Um, a lot of what I focus on whenever I've taken a new job is is kind of what's the business cadence. So, how do we really want to run the operations of the business? What weekly meetings, what monthly meetings, what quarterly meetings, what data, what reports, uh, who's involved? Uh simple things like running a monthly business review. Okay, well, what are we actually gonna talk about in that monthly business review and who all is in it? Uh, how cross-functional do you want to make it? Well, how do you slice and dice the business up? Uh is the MBR at the regional level, or is you know, how do you how do you kind of think those things? And um those are essential because that's really the mechanism, one of the main mechanisms by which you're signaling to the company what's important, how we want to operate, um, what the priorities are, how urgent are we, uh, what's the feedback loop. And so we're constantly iterating on that. And as we evolve, we're constantly changing that. We've experimented with like uh a weekly business review. Famously, Amazon was was one of the leaders. There's books written about it. Um we did that for a while. We've kind of paused that. We felt it was a little bit too much of a burden, but we're we're constantly tinkering with that. And I think that is one way. Uh, now that's through meeting cadence and and those sorts of things. And then there's uh how much, you know, what sort of data expectations do you have in terms of weekly reports and monthly reports and who has access to that? So how do you create a really uh and there's so much data now that it becomes overwhelming? And so how do you really figure out which ones are kind of the the elevated cadences and operating norms of the company where everybody's looking at data consistency, uh, certain reports are viewed as kind of the source of truth, and that way we have that common feedback loop and we're we're all understanding the realities of the business as much as possible, or we're hearing it in the right meetings in the first time. There is a lot of noise, and you just uh I'm constantly telling people, hey, relax, we just launched a product last week. One of my leaders was telling me we have to come up with some new pricing changes due to some feedback. I said, you know, relax, we've been in the market for four or five days. Let's let's let's just get some more data and we can adjust, you know, in the future. So people are so eager to do well, and they're so eager to like use the data, and I think that's that's great, but you also need to create this semblance of not being too quick twitch and make sure we're being really thoughtful at everything that we're trying to execute on.
SPEAKER_03:I love that. That's super valuable. Um insights. Do you have a favorite framework that you use for organizational rigor? Like, do you use OKRs or or something similar?
SPEAKER_04:We do use OKRs. Um we rolled them out several years ago. And uh one of the things that we learned, because the company had tried OKRs prior, you know, earlier in its metration, and we kind of brought them back uh about three years ago. And we did a lot of company training because it's easy to kind of tell people go write OKRs, but to do it well and to create common common norms around it. And we're still struggling with this because you have new people coming on board and they weren't part of the training. So, well, how to write OKRs effectively? What do we expect in terms of level of ambition? Uh you know, some companies kind of set OKRs where they expect to hit kind of 100%. So they're kind of like, this is what we're expecting. Others, and this is more typical, use OKRs to create ambitious targets where you're expecting to hit about 70%, 60 to 70 percent. Um, if you don't have that common understanding established, you're kind of getting mishmash of things. So, how do you set the norms, set the training, and then constantly reiterate that? So we do use OKRs. You know, I'm a big believer in MBRs, really thoughtful MBRs. A lot of people will say, Oh, we're taking two days every month to go through this. It's so much time and effort. But if we don't do it, then it's chaos. Everybody's got their own sliver of context or lack of context, and we're all just kind of running around doing the best we can without that ability to come together and really align on how things are going in different parts of the business, where we want to go bigger, where we want to make course corrections, how do we amplify things?
SPEAKER_03:Super valuable. And uh talking, I just think I need to introduce a lot of this to my own business because it's yeah, it's so hectic. Even you know, we're tiny. Um, but but but just the the chaos is is real. Ronnie, super grateful for your time. Incredibly valuable. I've taken away some personal nuggets, and I know that our audience will be getting a lot of value out of out of this as well. Um, any final um thoughts that you'd like to share from your own experience? Any tips that um you would offer to anyone that's looking at you know a high growth business, international expansion um that you could share?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I know a lot of people are are listening to your uh podcasts around their own personal journeys and and career progressions and things of that nature. And I would just say one one tip I I tell a lot of my friends who are looking for jobs is uh you know, you really want to treat it like a full-time job because too often people just reactive, hey, this this company pinged me, or I'm looking for a job, and you know, I have this interview lined up, so I'm just gonna see where this goes. And my my advice is always look, this is your whole future. You're gonna go spend two, three, four, ten years, and the future direction of your career is gonna be based on which company you choose. So try to really maximize your breadth of uh conversations. Try to have multiple things going at one time if you're in the market. And then really, really think about the company. It's more important than is this company paying me 5% more or 5% less? Uh that's gonna not matter. It's about are you joining a growth company, a leader, someone who's really investing and is it a healthy business? Really do everything you can to understand the real fundamentals of the business. Because if you are lucky enough to join uh a high growth business, not only will you make more money and have more growth opportunities in your current career, but companies like to recruit people from other successful companies and it'll just open up a lot more uh significant opportunities. So, one great company that you're able to join can really have a massive impact on your whole career. And people need to really think about that with the right level of focus uh when they're choosing their career, uh, not just a paycheck. It's it's really how do I set myself up for the maximum amount of potential opportunities? So that'd be one advice I give uh my kids and you know, other people I know who are kind of in the job market.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, very, very strong advice. And um I see the opposite a lot. People just throwing CVs at every single company and not really knowing what they're doing. And uh yeah, you're right. This is um is a meaningful contribution to your life where you're gonna spend a lot of the time and uh and in order to be happy, there needs to be a cultural fit and an alignment in in value systems as well. For sure. Um, Ronnie, if anyone wants to learn more about Cleo or connect with you directly, how can they do that?
SPEAKER_04:Well, yeah, come to Clio.com. There's a lot of information about Clio out there on our pages and social media. Uh, we're a very transparent company, and so it's a great way to learn about us. But if you have any ways I can help, uh feel free to ping me on LinkedIn and happy to connect with folks uh and see if I can help.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome. Thanks.
SPEAKER_04:All right, thank you.
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