Houston-based CS Disco announced on Thursday that it has closed on a $10 million Series B round of funding.
The company makes software that enables attorneys to better find and organize the millions of documents gathered for cases during the discovery process. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with existing investor LiveOak Venture Partners also coming in.
CS Disco launched its software in 2013 after founder and CEO Kiwi Camara, a computer scientist-turned-lawyer, found a client balking at paying the steep fees—anywhere from $350,000 to $700,000—charged by a document discovery company Camara’s firm was using. In the year since CS Disco raised its first round of funding—$2 million from LiveOak Venture—Camara says staff count has risen from 7 to 27, with attorneys at more than 300 law firms as clients. He expects headcount at CS Disco to increase to 70 in a year’s time.
After recently making some key management hires—former Compaq and HP executive Tom Benwell in sales and serial Houston entrepreneur Steve Kahan in marketing—CS Disco will use the new capital to expand sales and marketing field offices to expand the company’s footprint beyond Texas. “To date, all the collateral has been written by me,” Camara says, joking. “It’s amateur-hour marketing.”
Camara, who graduated from Harvard University’s law school at age 19, says building CS Disco has made him realize how firmly his milieu is in the legal profession, where business development is through referrals and inbound inquiries. “I’d never done sales; I’m not good at it,” he says. “That was the story of last year. Now we have real vice president-level executives who will run departments in sales, engineering, and finance.”
Camara says that CS Disco will also use the money to develop new software to automate other litigation support processes, which he declined to specify. “Many firms are using technology that was invented 20 years ago, or cumbersome manual practices,” he says. “We can automate those processes.”
And, of course, he wants to touch base with the company’s first crop of clients. Typically, CS Disco had signed up departments inside law firms, such as securities litigation groups. Now, Camara says, it’s time to see about other practices within those firms.
