From Seedling to Scaling Anthony Rose is a name that resonates with innovation.

A former head of BBC iPlayer, Rose has spent much of his career working on technology-driven solutions that challenge the status quo. However, in his latest venture, he's set his sights on a different challenge: making the process of startup fundraising more accessible, efficient, and less stressful.

Alongside angel investor Laurent Laffy, Rose co-founded SeedLegals, a platform designed to eliminate the inefficiencies and frustrations that often accompany legal paperwork during the fundraising process. The idea for SeedLegals sparked one night in Rome, when Rose and Laffy realized just how much time and money was wasted on legal complexities during funding rounds – and knew they had to fix it.

An innovative solution to a common problem
The inspiration for SeedLegals came from Rose's own experiences in the startup world. After leaving the BBC, he built and sold several startups, which gave him firsthand insight into the legal challenges faced by founders. During this time, he became acutely aware of the issues that plagued startup funding rounds, specifically the inefficiencies and costs of legal documentation.

The entrepreneur's solution? A modern technology platform that simplifies and automates the process of creating legal documents that are usually exchanged back and forth between founders and lawyers during funding rounds. By digitizing and streamlining these processes, SeedLegals offers an affordable and faster alternative to the traditional, lawyer-heavy model.

"We got together and then fell in love with the idea of taking the Word documents that lawyers send backwards and forwards and charge a fortune for, and make a modern technology platform a better way of doing that," Rose explains.

In doing so, they've transformed a cumbersome, outdated system into a sleek, accessible solution, empowering founders to focus more on building their businesses and less on the paperwork.

Common pitfalls founders face during fundraising
Having experienced the highs and lows of the startup world firsthand, Rose offers invaluable insights for fellow entrepreneurs. One of the biggest mistakes he sees founders make during fundraising? Failing to establish solid legal agreements from the very beginning.

"The biggest mistake that founders make is not creating founder agreements," he says emphatically. "Founders get together, they have an idea, they think it's going to be a party building it, and then things don't work out, and they can't get funding, someone has to still pay their rent, they split up, and then unless they have a founder agreement, one of the founders leaves and keeps all their shares, and then the business is uninvestable."

For Rose, the lack of a founder agreement is not just a small oversight - it's a major risk. Without a clear legal understanding of how shares are distributed and what happens if a co-founder leaves, the business can face significant challenges down the road. "So, thing number one is, when starting a business, you have to have a founder agreement that says, if you leave or your co-founder leaves, they have to give back some of their shares," Rose advises.

Beyond legal agreements, Rose also stresses that founders often make the mistake of focusing too much on technology and not enough on customer demand. "Founders think that the problem to solve is to build technology, but the real problem to solve is to have people want what you've built," he points out. Many founders, he notes, start hiring teams, building products, and raising money without first validating that there's a demand for what they are offering. Rose recommends that entrepreneurs test their product ideas with a simple prototype before diving into the fundraising process.

The secret sauce:
Having built successful startups in the past, Rose's approach to scaling SeedLegals and solving tech problems is rooted in what he calls "customer-driven development." For him, the key to building scalable products lies in being as close to customers as possible. This means engaging directly with users, talking to them about their pain points, and iterating based on their feedback.

"Be as close to your customers as possible, engage with them, talk to them, and in the early stages, focus on building exactly what they need," Rose explains. "If the CEO or the founders can be engaging directly with the customer, they can then see if people aren't buying the product, why they're not buying, what they are saying about the competitors."

Early-stage development is often messy and not scalable, but according to Rose, it's important to stay hands-on during these stages. For instance, when SeedLegals first started, Rose would personally sit on a beanbag and do customer calls, even marking up Word documents or setting up cap tables himself when the platform didn't yet have the functionality to do so. While this hands-on approach isn't scalable, it allowed Rose and his team to fine-tune the platform based on real-time customer feedback.

"You want to relentlessly and ruthlessly look to eliminate each of the reasons why people are saying no, which often is they simply don't understand what you're doing," he explains. "And then you hone the message, and you want to get the loop time as short as possible."

One of the most significant ways that SeedLegals is disrupting the startup ecosystem is by democratizing access to legal documents and fundraising tools. Traditionally, legal documents and the process of raising money have been the domain of those with access to expensive lawyers or VCs. SeedLegals, on the other hand, has made these resources available to all founders, regardless of their financial background or technical expertise.

When asked about the value proposition of SeedLegals, Rose shares his belief that many entrepreneurs don't wake up in the morning thinking about shareholder agreements or investment consents. "What they're looking for is money in the bank," he says, adding that what sets SeedLegals apart is not just its legal documents but also its holistic approach to supporting founders through the fundraising process. "What they want from the provider of that is going to include, for example, help and advice, a billing system that isn't billing by the hours, unlimited help and support, a platform that's on 24-7," Rose explains.

Through SeedLegals, Rose and his team aim to provide a solution that offers not just legal documents, but a comprehensive platform for startup fundraising that includes guidance, customer support, and real-time web chat for founders.

A revolutionary approach to fundraising
Another game-changing product from SeedLegals is SeedFast, a new way for founders to raise funds quickly and efficiently. Rose likens the traditional funding round process to a slow bus ride, where everyone has to get on board before the journey can begin. SeedFast, on the other hand, is akin to taking an Uber for each individual investor, allowing founders to raise smaller amounts of money from multiple investors at different times.

"If you think about a funding round like a bus trip, you're taking people on a holiday," Rose begins, explaining the old model. "You have to round up everyone to go on the bus. The bus can only leave when the last straggler arrives. And it's a slow process. What if instead you could get an Uber for each person as they come along?"

With SeedFast, investors don't have to wait for the entire funding round to be finalized before contributing their funds. Instead, founders can take money from investors as it becomes available and issue shares at a later date. This flexibility allows founders to access the capital they need when they need it, without the stress and uncertainty of waiting for a full funding round to come together.

"Fundraising transforms from 'I'm going to get all these people interested and then have to wait months to get them all on board' to 'every time I find somebody, I'm going to talk to them and see if I can take some money from them and then use that money to grow my business,'" Rose explains. "And now 70% of all fundraising is no longer in a funding round, in early stage rounds. It's now before the round with SeedFast or topping up the previous round."

This new model has transformed the way UK startups approach fundraising, making the process faster, less stressful, and more accessible for a wider range of founders.

Beyond the UK
As SeedLegals gains momentum in the UK, Rose and his team are setting their sights on new horizons. "We've launched in the US, which is very exciting," Rose shares. "The US is enormous, eight times the size of the UK."

Rose's vision for SeedLegals goes beyond transforming the UK startup landscape; it's about creating a seamless pathway for UK businesses looking to expand into the US. "For any UK company looking to move to the US, SeedLegals is now the perfect bridge," he concludes. This bold move not only positions SeedLegals as a game-changer in the legal tech space but also as a crucial tool for UK entrepreneurs aiming to scale globally.