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Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

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Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#51

Post by pengaru »

eganist wrote: post #42
ttul wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're already rich (as Justin is) and realize how big an upside can be, why not flush the toilet and start over? For a guy like Justin, time is the most precious commodity because money is meaningless.

This is great advice for an established founder, which might be why it's simultaneously one of the most damning reasons to avoid working for one.

It can be really brutal.

One of my earlier startups had multiple acquisition offers which would have made all the shareholder employees quite happy, but since the offers wouldn't have moved the wealth needle of the already wealthy founders by an order of magnitude, they turned them all down.

Years later and $100m+ of VC money burned the place went bankrupt and I now have some very expensive toilet paper in a folder somewhere.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#52

Post by g_p »

ol0gos wrote: post #9
notlukesky wrote: post #6

Let’s wait for the full autopsy but perhaps a better strategy would have been supplying tools and software to lawfirms, aggregating data and knowhow and then pivoting to an “automated” law firm as a service. But hindsight is always 20/20

The hybrid model made little sense in VC-land anyways. Gross margins were not as high as a full SaaS model. The transition to a full software model was never clearly laid out and seemed more wishful than anything.

I always wondered if the hybrid model was an experiment at ways around regulatory barriers to lawyers sharing fees/profits, a la a global multinational leasing the very expensive brand, logo, and internal software from tax-haven incorporated HQ... It's not sending away profits, it's just licensing some incredibly valuable IP, honest!

If the legal services arm was able to license the name and technology in a permitted way (like how a law firm can of course get their website and IT done by experts), it would seem to present an experiment at whether such a structure could act as a conduit to channel fees back into an investment vehicle.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#53

Post by woah »

dustingetz wrote: post #16

what if a startup charged $300 per month for all you can eat email legal advice backed by a rich library of templates? they would instantly dominate and there are 6M small businesses in the USA alone

This was exactly what atrium was doing except their price point was realistic

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#54

Post by slap_shot »

m0zg wrote: post #32
berberous wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get what you pay for. $300 is 20 minutes of a good lawyer’s time. The economics don’t work.

More like an hour of a good lawyer time. Mine charges $350/hr. But your point stands. I don't see how his work could be done with "templates". Most of the time I pay him for contract reviews.

High end firms can easily be $800+/hr for attorneys. I believe Wilson Sonsini was $1200/hr for an attorney I was recommended.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#55

Post by burgerquizz »

Justin Kan got into a terrible motorbike accident few months ago [1] . He then went through lot of thoughts on meaningful life and such kind of things in his tweets later. Would that impact the performance / outcome of Atrium?

[1] https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1191821878567915520

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#56

Post by gnicholas »

eganist wrote: post #46
gnicholas wrote: post #41

I swung by the Atrium booth at the Startup Grind conference a few weeks ago. A former lawyer, I was curious to hear their pitch. It was basically: we get you cheap lawyers, and we help them find new clients. I asked if all of their lawyers are based in the US, and they couldn't give me a straight answer. Eventually, when I said "well, of course they must all be US-licensed lawyers, right?" they said "oh, yeah, they m…

Legal is a notoriously sluggish industry, one that's almost infuriatingly incapable of adopting change and technology. Atrium's original pitch was exactly the opposite of what most legal teams are used to interacting with, and I can't think of a single biglaw attorney (sorry for the anecdote) who had faith in the idea or its execution. The original concept, as a reminder: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/atrium-lega…

Part of the reason law firms are resistant to technological change is that they are paid hourly (for the most part) and therefore do not yearn for efficiencies. If it increases efficiency, they will literally lose money in hourly billings.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#57

Post by eganist »

pengaru wrote: post #51
eganist wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice for an established founder, which might be why it's simultaneously one of the most damning reasons to avoid working for one.

It can be really brutal. One of my earlier startups had multiple acquisition offers which would have made all the shareholder employees quite happy, but since the offers wouldn't have moved the wealth needle of the already wealthy founders by an order of magnitude, they turned them all down. Years later and $100m+ of VC money burned the place went bankrupt and I now have some very expensive toilet paper in a folder s…

> One of my earlier startups had multiple acquisition offers which would have made all the shareholder employees quite happy, but since the offers wouldn't have moved the wealth needle of the already wealthy founders by an order of magnitude, they turned them all down.

This is distressingly common, and not just in the valley.

I've seen numerous film deals fall apart because the producer didn't want to take a 10-30% discount on their standard fee (we're talking in the realm of a $150k discount on a personal take of 500k-1.5m on a deal), films that otherwise would've actually been made ended up falling apart because someone wanted to extract just that much more value.

Kinda like overplaying the market, really.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#58

Post by gnicholas »

slap_shot wrote: post #54
m0zg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like an hour of a good lawyer time. Mine charges $350/hr. But your point stands. I don't see how his work could be done with "templates". Most of the time I pay him for contract reviews.

High end firms can easily be $800+/hr for attorneys. I believe Wilson Sonsini was $1200/hr for an attorney I was recommended.

Top partners were already at $1,200/hr when I left the law in 2014. They’re now hovering around $2,000/hr.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#59

Post by eganist »

gnicholas wrote: post #56
eganist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal is a notoriously sluggish industry, one that's almost infuriatingly incapable of adopting change and technology. Atrium's original pitch was exactly the opposite of what most legal teams are used to interacting with, and I can't think of a single biglaw attorney (sorry for the anecdote) who had faith in the idea or its execution. The original concept, as a reminder: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/atrium-lega…

Part of the reason law firms are resistant to technological change is that they are paid hourly (for the most part) and therefore do not yearn for efficiencies. If it increases efficiency, they will literally lose money in hourly billings.

Well if you think about it, the original concept behind Atrium was to kill a business model.

Kinda difficult to effectively pay lawyers to shoot their own feet.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#60

Post by staticautomatic »

slap_shot wrote: post #54
m0zg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like an hour of a good lawyer time. Mine charges $350/hr. But your point stands. I don't see how his work could be done with "templates". Most of the time I pay him for contract reviews.

High end firms can easily be $800+/hr for attorneys. I believe Wilson Sonsini was $1200/hr for an attorney I was recommended.

Most people who bill at those rates are no better than people who bill $300.
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