Female founders fight for funding
A Taranaki lawyer who set up a pioneering online legal company says she has been approached by potential investors from the other side of the world after being praised by one of the world’s most influential business magazines.
Claudia King runs Automio, a technology platform which allows lawyers to interview their clients online and create instant, customised contracts, legal documents and advice.
King’s company was the only New Zealand business featured in a list of 60 women-led startups published by Forbes magazine, and she said the resulting publicity had attracted interest from legal firms in America.
‘‘I have been approached by a number of United States-based investors and usually US-based investors aren’t too interested in companies of my size here in New Zealand,’’ said King, who took over her late father Dennis’s legal practice before developing her company.
The Forbes list aims to showcase female-led startups in the tech world and help businesswomen receive investment.
King said female-led startup businesses do not receive enough funding compared to their male counterparts and being named in the Forbes list was bringing light to the situation.
Only 1.9 per cent of venture capital funding and 10 per cent of global funding went to women-led startups last year, she said.
‘‘Venture Capital only goes to a very small percentage of women-founded companies.
‘‘There’s quite a lot of work behind the scenes at the moment to try and increase that number so that investors are investing more into women-led companies.’’
King believes the Forbes list will help other women succeed in business. ‘‘Just the list itself and helping women attract capital and raise venture capital will be good,’’ she said.
After raising finance three times, attracting over 21 investors, mainly from Taranaki, and having over 100 users of the software, King said Automio was a success, despite being on the market for only a year.
King became a lawyer in 2006 and in 2017 sold her law firm, Dennis King Law, to focus solely on automated online legal documents after she saw the resistance people had towards using lawyers.
‘‘People don’t like lawyers for a number of reasons, including the cost. Lawyers are very difficult to access often,’’ she said.
King started out with an online company called LegalBeagle that allowed customers to create their own legal documents, which grew into Automio. ‘‘We could always see that LegalBeagle was going to be restricted to New Zealand and lawyers.
‘‘The product we had developed to be used in LegalBeagle could be used really by any business anywhere in the world.’’