On Pierre Marchès’ smartphone, notifications follow one another. “The commercial version of Angelaw’s contract management software has just been delivered”explains the president of the legaltech founded between Paris and Toulon with the business law firm August Debouzy – its largest shareholder – and 321founded, the French corporate studio whose specialty is to grow startups by backing them with new large groups.
In the premises of TVT, in Chalucet, in the heart of Toulon, where he welcomes us, this entrepreneur is like a fish in water.
Originally from Paris, his training as a lawyer took him ten years ago to the Var where he worked for large companies in the region, such as CNIM, Naval Group or ECA, before being tempted by the entrepreneurship.
The Propizi adventure
“I wanted to do an Executive MBA in Paris for the needs of the position offered to me by ECA [aujourd’hui Exail] legal director at 26! And there, I met entrepreneurs and I decided to create my consulting firm in 2020”remembers the leader.
His startupper soul and above all the breeding ground for innovation in Toulon did the rest. First with the launch of Propizi in 2021, alongside Cannes resident Maxime Sahagian, to meet a need that the lawyer had quickly identified.
“We realized that the bulk of our requests concerned responding to calls for tenders from large groups, the ministries also asked us to draft them. But for SMEs, access to support was too expensive, it was necessary to tech to make it accessible. We have 99.6% of SMEs in France and they only win 25% of calls for tenders.”
Propizi has been addressing this market for two years. And led Pierre Marchès on another path. By putting him on the path of Patrick Amiel, founder of 321founded, who convinced him to launch, with the firm August Debouzy, Angelaw, a startup whose own AI is capable of creating tailor-made contracts to meet the daily needs of companies: employment contracts, general conditions of sale, legal notices…
“The August Debouzy firm is 170 lawyers; the idea is to encapsulate knowledge in a machine learning model to have an intelligent tool that adapts to the need”, details the president who sold a good part of his shares in Propizi last June and embarked on this new adventure. After a version released in January and the completion of a fundraising of €1.5 million, Angelaw already had 150 user companies at the end of March, “including a third of more than 700 employees”.
A tailor-made tool
Be careful, argues the lawyer, it is not a question of replacing the human resources of the legal departments, rather of relieving them of all the unrewarding daily charges so that they can concentrate on more specific subjects. While providing a tool capable of adapting according to the situations and profile of the companies concerned, to preserve the tailor-made know-how specific to the co-founder and shareholder firm.
With an assumed choice: that of offering these services, of which the electronic signature is a part, free of charge to very small businesses and start-ups, which in turn allows them to supply data to Angelaw’s artificial intelligence.
Profitability before the end of 2024?
For a week now, the commercial version has been available, and provides a series of offers adapted to the size of companies. “We receive calls for tenders from large groups because they have thousands of contracts to manage that a team of lawyers does not necessarily have the time to follow”, comments Pierre Marchès in the middle of the marketing phase with renowned ETIs and especially sometimes in the face of formidable competitors, particularly from across the Atlantic. But the nugget Angelaw, shared between its Parisian headquarters and its Toulon establishment to which the president is above all, is armed for this conquest.
For the past two weeks, it has entered the list of AI companies in digital France and its fundraising successfully completed last December, mainly with business angels, will allow it to recruit a dozen talents to strengthen the current team of fifteen. “We have people here in Toulon and others in Paris, but everyone can work from where they want. We are between 24 and 36 years old and we get along well, it’s essential, the project must include everything the world, otherwise people would go somewhere else.”
We are looking for specialists in data, AI, marketing, design and also sales people. At the rate things are going, Angelaw might reach profitability before the end of 2024, the initial goal. And who knows, maybe setting up its headquarters in Toulon, at the heart of the ecosystem where its story began.
> www.angelaw.fr/
