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Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

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Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#81

Post by jakestein »

singleshot_ wrote: post #78
nkko wrote: post #75

This guy Art Vandelay is a real piece of work, consider all agreements with him with top care. Btw love the product. Would be nice to have optional blocks with explainers. Something like special terms. Also, LLMs would be nice so that you could ‘chat’ with the document to understand it better. Make it explainable. Or to help you define specific parts such as the subject of the NDA, which are typically too broad or un…

The optional block/explainer bit is how Westlaw practical law works. It seems like the main advantage of this over having lawyers who each have access to some tool that is proposing optional sections is that in this model, the end users agree to limit themselves to the optional blocks but they aren’t getting advice on what they mean. The first is an improvement but without the second I’d be a little concerned. The co…

To your point about advice on what the blocks mean, we've started to do two things related to this, and I'd be interested to know if either are close to what you have in mind.

1) We have a language library (https://commonpaper.com/language-library/) of optional sections to add for specific use cases. Most of them don't yet have much context beyond the language itself, but here's a page where we provide an explanation https://commonpaper.com/standards/mutual-nda/account-mapping

2) In certain places within the app, we have tooltips with short explanations and links to longer help articles. So when you hover over "Auto renewal" we pop up the text "At the end of this contract, do you want your customer to automatically roll into another contract on the same terms? Learn more."

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#82

Post by jakestein »

jakestein wrote: post #81
singleshot_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optional block/explainer bit is how Westlaw practical law works. It seems like the main advantage of this over having lawyers who each have access to some tool that is proposing optional sections is that in this model, the end users agree to limit themselves to the optional blocks but they aren’t getting advice on what they mean. The first is an improvement but without the second I’d be a little concerned. The co…

To your point about advice on what the blocks mean, we've started to do two things related to this, and I'd be interested to know if either are close to what you have in mind. 1) We have a language library ( https://commonpaper.com/language-library/ ) of optional sections to add for specific use cases. Most of them don't yet have much context beyond the language itself, but here's a page where we provide an explanati…

I'd also be interested to know which standard contracts you've seen in the construction industry. We're always trying to learn from other, related projects

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#83

Post by jakestein »

gamblor956 wrote: post #80

Ran it by our Legal Department. The inability to customize all aspects of the contracts to handle specific needs for each contract renders this DOA. What you see as unnecessary negotiation over "standard terms" they see as protecting the company's specific interests based on its needs and risk tolerances. By eliminating that, you've eliminated most of the potential market, since differences over "standard terms" usua…

Totally agree that this won't work for all companies or situations. You're right that our initial target market is technology companies, although many of our users are outside Silicon Valley.

I also agree that getting large companies to agree to use the standards will be hard, but there examples of them adopting other standard contracts:

Here's Bank of America entering into the ISDA Master Agreement for financial derivatives https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065696/000119312511...

and Disney using the IAB Standard Terms for online ads https://disneyconnect.com/dpep/disney-ad-guidelines/

We've already seen our users closing deals with Fortune 500 companies using the standard contracts, but we have a lot more work to do on that front.

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#84

Post by bengarvey »

gnicholas wrote: post #76
bengarvey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CTO and Co-founder here. While we certainly are using technology to help solve the problem, it's more about creating contracts in a way that helps you focus on the key changes from contract to contract. When you build on immutable terms, and the only changes are in the contract's cover sheet, you can focus on the changes and not hunt down for words inside of an inscrutable PDF.

Are your founders lawyers, by chance? It seems like you understand the customer pain, but it's possible that creating a fix for this pain requires an intimate knowledge of how the legal community will react. As GP stated, this could be a social problem, and in that case it is one that is caused/perpetuated by lawyers. Or it could just be a matter of incentive misalignment. Having deep insights into the mindset and fi…

My cofounder and I are not lawyers, but we have a great lawyer on our founding team and are advised by many more. https://commonpaper.com/committee/

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#85

Post by oldtownroad »

gavinhoward wrote: post #38

I am building a business right now, and I need a standard contract for customers. So this is exciting! I am delighted! I just wish I were in the target audience. My business is not a startup, and I'm going to need specific terms because I'm a one-man shop. (How do you handle taking a vacation as a one-man shop? Work will effectively cease.) Maybe I'll look at the contributor list and find an attorney in my state, whi…

Business advice rather than legal but… your customers are working with a company, not a person: the number of people at your company is immaterial. Lots of well-funded startups send everyone on vacation at Christmas for 2 weeks, and in some parts of the world it’s very normal for people to take 4+ weeks off work in a row. Your focus should be on building a business that can operate while you’re on vacation, or when something unexpected happens like hospitalisation: putting vacations into a contract is the wrong solution (and people will think you’re bananas).

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#86

Post by jakestein »

chromatin wrote: post #70

I am just starting my small SaaS business and absolutely needed something like this. Favorite'ing this post and will return to it soon. Good luck, great idea! From a technical perspective, I especially appreciate the notion that much of the wording can be standardized, with key variables identified and extracted as structured data.

That's great to hear. Please let us know if we can help once you get started

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#88

Post by singleshot_ »

jakestein wrote: post #82
jakestein wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your point about advice on what the blocks mean, we've started to do two things related to this, and I'd be interested to know if either are close to what you have in mind. 1) We have a language library ( https://commonpaper.com/language-library/ ) of optional sections to add for specific use cases. Most of them don't yet have much context beyond the language itself, but here's a page where we provide an explanati…

I'd also be interested to know which standard contracts you've seen in the construction industry. We're always trying to learn from other, related projects

ConsensusDocs would be one I’ve seen end up in a big ol’ fight. I gotta spend a little more time to answer the other question, though.

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#89

Post by matthewmcg »

jakestein wrote: post #35
melvinmelih wrote: post #20

> The breaking point came when one of our customers was acquired by Oracle. They wanted to keep using our product, but had to move from our original contract to the one that Oracle uses. In exchange for this, they were willing to increase the price they were paying from $6,000 to $24,000 per year. This is a cool idea, but the irony here is that Oracle probably still wouldn't use the Common Paper contract and insist o…

Oracle and companies like it are definitely the hardest to get on board. That being said, our users have already closed deals with Fortune 500 companies using the standard contracts, and they see a big decrease in the percentage of deals that they have to do on their customer's contracts. We're also encouraged by the examples of standard contracts in other domains that have gotten traction with large enterprises. Bas…

Came here to make the comment that there are certain industry specific contract forms that are very deeply embedded in very narrow domains, including things like NAEBs (natural gas commodity sales) and the AIA Contract Forms (construction). And of course real estate. Some are publicly available. Others need to be purchased from the organizations that create them. The common factor seems to be sponsorship by an enduring organization that is widely trusted.

Re: Launch HN: Common Paper (YC W23) – SAFEs for Commercial Contracts

#90

Post by jakestein »

matthewmcg wrote: post #89
jakestein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle and companies like it are definitely the hardest to get on board. That being said, our users have already closed deals with Fortune 500 companies using the standard contracts, and they see a big decrease in the percentage of deals that they have to do on their customer's contracts. We're also encouraged by the examples of standard contracts in other domains that have gotten traction with large enterprises. Bas…

Came here to make the comment that there are certain industry specific contract forms that are very deeply embedded in very narrow domains, including things like NAEBs (natural gas commodity sales) and the AIA Contract Forms (construction). And of course real estate. Some are publicly available. Others need to be purchased from the organizations that create them. The common factor seems to be sponsorship by an enduri…

I had heard of the AIA forms but not the NAEB, thanks for sharing that one. Looking forward to checking it out.

I really like the framing of "an enduring organization that is widely trusted." Many of these are industry associations, but YC doesn't fit that criteria with the SAFE. Your definition captures all of the examples I can think of.

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