Customer Overview:
Legal Connection is a communication and case management tool designed for lawyers and both law firms and corporate legal departments. The company's founder and CEO, Guy Stern, embarked on a journey to turn Legal Connection into a billion-dollar company. However, as a self-described visionary and dreamer, he struggled with financial modelling and sought assistance to create accurate and impressive pitch decks for investors. Guy's previous experiences with financial modelling involved hiring a friend and exploring expensive alternatives that were time-consuming and complex.
Challenges Faced:
- Lack of financial modelling expertise: Guy's expertise lay in the visionary aspects of the business, while he struggled with the intricacies of financial modelling.
- Time and cost constraints: Traditional financial modelling methods, such as using Excel spreadsheets, were time-consuming and expensive. Guy needed a more efficient and cost-effective solution.
- Business pivots: As Legal Connection went through multiple business pivots, Guy found it challenging to adapt and create new financial models to align with the evolving direction of the company.
Discovering Blox:
In search of a more user-friendly and intuitive solution for financial modelling, Guy discovered Blox, a financial planning, modelling, and forecasting platform tailored to start-ups, scale-ups, and SMEs. Blox stood out to Guy because it eliminated the need for cumbersome and error-prone spreadsheets and all their inherent issues - complex formulas, time-consuming edits, version control, difficult to present to third-parties - offering an organic and intuitive model-building experience.
Working with Blox:
Upon engaging with Blox, Guy was impressed with the collaborative and engaging nature of the team. They asked important questions, discussing the model required and understanding his business objectives. Guy appreciated the proactive involvement of the team, even though he understood that Blox aimed to be a self-service platform. He acknowledged the value of having experts available to guide users through the process, and he commended Blox's new services offering, which included building bespoke models at a reasonable cost.
“Blox’s model builder explained the concepts to us in ways that made them easy to understand and that allowed us to build a model which has more variables, which in turn means that investors could have a better sense of why we get to the numbers that we get to.”
Benefits of Using Blox:
- Simplified model creation: Blox's user-friendly interface allowed Guy and his team to build financial models quickly and easily, eliminating the need for cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, and with no need for knowledge of complex formulas.
- Comprehensive and accurate models: Blox guided Guy in considering various revenue streams, costs, taxes, staffing, and even granular details like staff recruitment and compensation over time. The models projected the company's financial outlook over a five-year period, enabling investors to gain a better understanding of the company's growth potential.
- Real-time adjustments: Blox empowered Guy to make real-time adjustments to the model as the business evolved or when investors requested changes. This flexibility allowed Guy to present multiple versions of the model simultaneously without the chaos associated with managing multiple Excel spreadsheets.
- Improved investor perception: While Guy had initial concerns about investors' perceptions of Blox-generated models compared to traditional Excel-based models, he quickly realised that presenting data from Blox to potential acquirers could result in more favourable valuations. The comprehensive and transparent nature of the models generated with Blox garnered increased respect and trust from investors.
- Future prospects: Guy recognised the potential benefits of Blox's generative AI product, which would allow users to have conversations with the system and have it generate models based on their specific needs, and the unique nature of their business.
“Blox makes it really simple for us as the users to go in, edit the model ourselves and see in real-time how changes to the model affect the changes to the projections. That really helps us, not just from a business planning perspective, but also to tweak the model in relation to questions from investors.”
Blox revolutionised Legal Connection's financial modelling process, providing Guy and his team with a user-friendly, intuitive, and cost-effective solution. By simplifying the model creation process, offering real-time adjustments, and generating comprehensive and accurate projections, Blox empowered Legal Connection to gain confidence in their numbers, enhance investor interactions, and navigate business pivots effectively.
I’ve been recommending Blox to fellow founders because I often see people reaching out saying, ‘Is there anyone in here who can help me to build a financial model?’ and then you see people replying, “yes, I charge £500, I charge £1,000,”. I think Blox is going to enable a lot of start-ups to get past that cost and expertise barrier that’s very difficult to overcome right now.”
Guy is now fundraising and engaging with investors with confidence, given the solidity of his financial models, and their accessibility. As Legal Connection continues to grow and evolve, Guy plans to utilise Blox to plan, model, and forecast for other areas of his business, and is excited to explore the potential benefits of Blox's generative AI product, which would enable his users to have conversations with the system and generate models tailored to the company’s specific needs.
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