Founders’ success story
Close friends since elementary school, Rian Gauvreau and Jack Newton had long had a plan to form a company together. The original dream was aerospace. But a different opportunity came along in 2007 when Gauvreau was working in legal technology for a large national law firm.
“I got exposed to all sorts of technology that was well-provided-for in large environments, and realized that smaller practices out there weren’t,” he says. “But the reality is, four out of five lawyers run solo or small firms, and any software solutions that were available to them were expensive and cumbersome. That turned out to be a light-bulb moment.”
Conversations with the Law Society of B.C. confirmed a need for better technology solutions that were affordable and easy to use. “That provided Jack and I with the genesis of an idea,” Gauvreau says. “So we got together to talk about how we could serve smaller firms that needed the tools to do their jobs well and simply. We came up with a cloud-based solution to help them manage their files easily and securely, which was unheard of in the legal industry at the time.”
A computer scientist by training, Newton also gained exposure to the startup community while working with a University of Alberta spinoff company doing research and development in life sciences. Gauvreau says given their backgrounds, they were able to “train each other up to create a game-changing solution.”
“We both believed the legal space was ripe for disruption,” Newton says. “We realized at the time that a profound technology change was starting to happen with the shift to the cloud and that it would be transformational for industry as a whole.”
Eighteen months after the idea stage, Clio was launched with the long-term vision of transforming the practice of law, for good.
“While there was a competitive company at the time, we were the first out of the gate,” Gauvreau says.
Once launched, the company targeted the U.S. market first, he adds. “Our studies showed there was more of an appetite there. We soon discovered there were plenty of early adopters who welcomed the idea with open arms.”
In 2014, Clio secured $20 million in funding, which catapulted growth even further. Today, the company has 200 employees (referred to as “Clions”) working in offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Dublin, or as remote workers. That number is expected to hit 300 by the end of this year.
“When we started it was just the two of us in a garage doing all the coding, marketing, sales and support ourselves,” Gauvreau says. “We’ve been on an incredible trajectory since then.”