>> Narrator: From the heart of Silicon Valley,
it's theCube.
Covering CloudNOW's seventh annual
top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation awards.
>> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCube
on the ground at Facebook headquarters.
We are here for the 7th annual Cloud Now
top women in cloud innovation awards.
Excited to be welcoming to theCube for the first time,
one of tonight's winners, Catherine Krow,
the founder and CEO of Digitory Legal.
Catherine, welcome.
>> Thank you so much, it's a pleasure to be here.
>> So one of the things I love about your story, Catherine,
is you were a practicing attorney for 17 years.
>> Yes.
>> You're one of the assistant DA's in San Francisco.
And you are now the founder of a SAS based software company.
>> I am, and I was a partner at major law firm named Orrick
for many many years before doing that.
>> So, I can imagine, back in school
when you were in law school, didn't envision you would
actually be a female entrepreneur in technology.
>> Oh heavens no. When I graduated from law school
20 years ago, this was probably dead last
on the things that I thought I would be doing.
But, when I was practicing, it became clear
that there was an enormous change in the market,
and a huge need for better and more powerful tools,
particularly around the area
of cost management and cost prediction.
>> So tell us a little bit about Digitory Legal,
and exactly what the software enables
legal departments and companies to do.
>> Well, the short answer is, we are bringing
data driven cost prediction to law.
And we're doing it to really help law firms
and corporate legal departments succeed
in a changing legal market.
Now, for most of the time that I was practicing law,
when clients would ask that "how much" question,
the answer, which was perfectly acceptable,
was, it depends.
And that is no longer acceptable.
So, in order for legal departments to do their job
and for law firms to really succeed,
we have to, as an industry, dig into our data
and do better. And that's what we do.
>> So when you had the idea, tell us about the process
and the phases that you went through to carry it forward
and get the angel funding that you're currently receiving.
>> Well, the starting point was a lot of market research.
Because I knew as a lawyer what my pain point was.
I knew how hard it was to answer
that "how much "question in complicated cases,
and communicate with clients when things would change.
But I didn't know if everybody else was feeling that pain,
and I didn't know if there were markets out there,
software tools out there that I just didn't know about.
So I dug in and I dug in deep on what was out there,
what were the pain points,
and it took several months to realize
that the problem really is a data problem,
and it's been an industry wide problem for a long time.
So to solve cost prediction,
we needed to tackle the data problem,
and then it was about pulling on my networking,
finding the best Silicon Valley talent to help me do that.
>> And speaking of network, here we are at CloudNOW,
which is the network of women.
And your background,
and actually digging in there
and being an attorney, looking at,
these are the challenges I'm having,
how much of an advantage has that been
in the networking conversations that you've had,
demonstrating to potential funders
and those that are funding you,
this is a huge gap in the market that isn't solvable,
we have an idea, help us actually start this
so we can start enabling organizations
to leverage that data as you're saying,
it's really the only option now.
>> The industry expertise, the deep experience
and my background, has really helped
because I walked away from a big law firm partnership
to solve this problem, it was so pressing.
And there are very clear trigger points
if you understand the industry very well, that are,
make it easy to explain why now, and why us,
and the market has changed
and the whole approach of corporate law has changed,
and we can explain that
because I've lived it and breathed it.
>> So a big part of this is digital transformation,
which is a theme we hear at every tech event that we go to,
but it's not just transforming a tech company.
I was talking this morning to a ski resort company
that digitized their entire process
from paper to electronic, so everybody understands
we are digital, we are mobile, we need to have that.
I'm curious, do your conversations
with maybe traditional law firms,
maybe such as the ones that you've worked at,
how easy is it to get them on board with being data driven,
is the only way for you as a law form to continue to succeed
and to compete with the next generation that understands
data has to drive the business, revenue opportunities, etc.
>> There's fortunately there's been
enough publicity and enough of a market shift,
and requirements on the client side that
law is starting to understand that
data driven decision making is the way of the future,
and if they are not early, they are late.
So in order to compete in what has become
an incredibly difficult market for law firms,
they must be able to help their clients
make data driven decisions,
and be different than the rest of the pack.
So fortunately, the market has shifted,
and that shift is very very clear
to even the most traditional law firms.
>> So even in customer conversations, they're getting it.
>> They're getting it, and they know that
I experience their pain. So it's working.
>> Excellent. Well kind of to wrap things up,
and to bring us back to the event that we're at tonight,
you have the opportunity not only to present
to about 300 attendees today,
this event was sold out not even advertised,
it was selling like hotcakes with just networking
and word of mouth, but there's also some pretty big
notable keynotes that are here tonight.
Sheryl Sandberg being one of them,
and kind of one of the beacons
that us females in technology look to.
You have the opportunity as a lawyer turned
technology entrepreneur to present in front of
someone who's pretty well known and inspirational.
Thoughts on that?
>> It's an honor. It's an honor and a privilege.
I really can't thank CloudNOW enough
for putting together this event
and giving female entrepreneurs like myself
the opportunity to stand up
and say what we do to an audience like this.
>> Lisa: It's pretty exciting. >> Yeah.
>> Last question there, about your company,
are you guys hiring, what types of rock stars
are you looking for?
Are you looking for people with legal background?
With tech background?
>> Um AI, because the core of what we do
is artificial intelligence, natural language processing,
so rock stars in artificial intelligence,
send me your resume, I would love to talk to you.
>> Excellent. Catherine, congratulations on the award.
Thank you so much for stopping by.
Lawyer turned tech entrepreneur.
I love that, it's a great headline.
>> Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time.
>> Our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCube.
I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters.
We'll see you next time.
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