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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

#151

Post by jakestein »

jordigg wrote: post #140

There has been an effort to standardize MNDAs with oneNDA ( https://onenda.org/ ), at least in tech and I've seen it work well for SaaS deals. I think they also released oneDPA but I haven't used it yet to understand if it accepted or not. I wish more companies would use standard contracts, definitely helpful for smaller orgs with non-existen or very small legal teams. Now we just need them to be well accepted...

I'm right there with you on more companies using standards :)

As you mentioned, there are some other efforts to create standards like oneNDA. We're sort of competitive with them, in a similar way that the Apache license is competitive with the GPL.

While there are important differences in our approaches and focus areas, I'm a fan of more adoption of standards in general and there's a lot that we agree on.

Some companies choose Common Paper over oneNDA because we offer agreement types that they don't, including a Cloud Service Agreement, Design Partner Agreement, and Professional Services Agreement. As far as I know, they only provide agreement templates and not software to manage them.

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

#152

Post by jakestein »

sbolt wrote: post #30

Is this similar to https://bonterms.com/ ?

There are some similarities in our model to Bonterms. We're sort of competitive with them, in a similar way that the Apache license is competitive with the GPL.

While there are important differences in our approaches and focus areas, I'm a fan of more adoption of standards in general and there's a lot that we agree on.

Some companies choose Common Paper over Bonterms because we offer agreement types that they don't, including a Design Partner Agreement and Partnership Agreement. As far as I know, they only provide agreement templates and not software to manage them.

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

#153

Post by jakestein »

francoismassot wrote: post #148
jakestein wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, and you're correct that so far we've been mostly focused on cloud software so far. We've recieved some other requests for an on-premises contract as well, and we plan to add that. The Cloud Service Agreement allows for a product with both on-prem and cloud-hosted components, so it might be a fit if you have a web-based control plane, for instance. However, if your product is purely on-prem, then the CSA is…

Yes, it's purely on-prem for now. Will follow closely your development, don't hesitate to ping me if you need some inputs to work on an on-premise contract.

I really appreciate that, thank you

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

#154

Post by gavinhoward »

oldtownroad wrote: post #85
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 s…

My business model is support for my software.

Can you tell me how to make my business run without me using that model? Most startups don't do support for this reason; I'm pretty sure it's impossible to do support without an available person.

But it's not unprecedented. Think Daniel Stenberg of libcurl.

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

#155

Post by tomatocracy »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #15
calny wrote: post #2

Congrats on the launch! There's certainly a "problem" worth solving here. I'm a lawyer, and it's crazy that I occasionally actually have to negotiate non-substantive parts of contracts like severance clauses. There really should be standardized boilerplate for at least some provisions (like you're doing), where companies can quickly say "we are using the common terms", and if another side pushes back it raises questi…

As a serial business owner and principal, it's crazy that anyone expects me to agree to boilerplate contracts without negotiation. Boilerplate is a first draft as far as I'm concerned. Who is to say what is substantive to me?

There are plenty of areas where there is a standardised starting point for contracts - ISDA has already been mentioned but you also have LMA loan documentation in the financial space, standard/default articles of association for companies, various standardised construction contracts (eg NEC in the UK), standardised contracts (sometimes even written into legislation) for land purchases, etc - the point is you draft (to greater or lesser extent) on the basis of where you want to differ from the standardised contract. Creating standardised contracts in such a way that the commonly customised parts are machine readable data sounds like a very good thing to me.

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

#156

Post by davecyen »

bengarvey wrote: post #57
davecyen wrote: post #53

Love what you’re building here. How are you guys thinking about potentially integrating LLMs?

Co-founder here: How would you integrate an LLM into this?

A couple use cases were already listed in other comments:

1) Document search 2) Translating plain english Legalease

But seems like the highest leverage here is building a copilot for authoring new contract templates that Common Paper doesn't offer yet (maybe the legal advisory panel could assist with RLHF training).

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

#157

Post by robertlagrant »

jakestein wrote: post #12
randyzwitch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed…feels like this is as much a cultural problem as a tech one. Meaning, from my experience at large companies, I feel like those lawyers get off on the fight of who gets to write the terms

Culture is definitely part of the problem, and I completely agree that tech alone can't solve it. I also think it's critical to change the incentives that lawyers are responding to. I've spoken with lots of lawyers in procurement at large companies. They're typically perceived as a cost center, and they often have to deal with lots of people from the rest of the business complaining that the contracts need to be revi…

I think you're on to something. Having done a bit of procurement pain, there is clearly a better way, and this might well be it. I'm rooting for you.

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

#158

Post by robertlagrant »

gavinhoward wrote: post #154
oldtownroad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

My business model is support for my software. Can you tell me how to make my business run without me using that model? Most startups don't do support for this reason; I'm pretty sure it's impossible to do support without an available person. But it's not unprecedented. Think Daniel Stenberg of libcurl.

I think most businesses solve this problem by charging enough to employ another person. If there's not enough value in the market for that then fair enough, but that would be the normal solution.

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

#159

Post by jakestein »

robertlagrant wrote: post #157
jakestein wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture is definitely part of the problem, and I completely agree that tech alone can't solve it. I also think it's critical to change the incentives that lawyers are responding to. I've spoken with lots of lawyers in procurement at large companies. They're typically perceived as a cost center, and they often have to deal with lots of people from the rest of the business complaining that the contracts need to be revi…

I think you're on to something. Having done a bit of procurement pain, there is clearly a better way, and this might well be it. I'm rooting for you.

Thank you!

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

#160

Post by mguerville »

I work at a large publicly traded tech company and spend 3-5 hours a week in various meetings solely focused on getting updates on the contracting process with fewer than 20 enterprise accounts... I may not be able to use this near term but thank you for creating it and I will share with my stakeholders for inspiration at the very least.

I do share carlosdp's concern on law firms' (and even internal legal teams)'s willingness to use something like this though, as it threatens their billable hours (or soft power)

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