Female Founders Score Twice as PocketLaw + SnapDragon Bag Funding

Two legal tech startups, both created by female founders, have bagged vital funding to expand their businesses.

SnapDragon Monitoring, an online brand protection business, has raised £1.2m ($1.7m) in its latest funding round, bringing the total raised to just over £3m ($4.1m). The cash came from ACF Investors, Mercia, and Scottish Enterprise.

Meanwhile, PocketLaw, the platform that provides a one-stop-shop for businesses’ legal needs – and which Artificial Lawyer covered recently – has also by coincidence raised exactly £1.2m ($1.7m) as well. The startup, headquartered in Sweden and with an office now in London, has also raised £3m ($4.1m) to date, just as SnapDragon has. Now there’s a double coincidence!

SnapDragon, the Scottish IP-focused company, said: ‘The funding is a positive for female-led technology companies, as according to Crunchbase figures only 2.3% of venture capital went to female-led start-ups in 2020. Interestingly, when female-led start-ups do get funded, they’re more likely to be successful – delivering more than twice as much revenue per dollar invested.’

As to what the company does, SnapDragon Monitoring’s ‘Swoop’ platform searches for copies and counterfeits of products and brands, so that they can be removed from sale. Doing so protects revenues, reputations and, most importantly, the end consumer, they said. Current clients include US baby brand 4moms, Australian b.box, AG Barr, the producers of the iconic IRN-BRU and Rubicon brands; UK-based Bondeye, and StylPro.

Rachel Jones, Founder (pictured directly above), commented: ‘We are pleased to have successfully raised additional funding to enable further business development and growth. We are a female-led business, bucking the trend in terms of raising investment and being in the tech space – and delivering outstanding results to protect brands around the world. We are hugely proud of everything the team has achieved to date, not least preventing over £100m of fake goods being sold in the last 12 months, and look forward to future growth and success.’

Meanwhile, for PocketLaw, their funding came from Christoffer Norman (former Investment Manager at VC firm Northzone, and founding member at ecommerce unicorn Avito); Ludvig Thureson (founding member at Avito), and investor Adrian Brummer.

Existing investors Cristina Stenbeck (former Executive Chairman at Kinnevik), Susanna Campbell (Director at Kinnevik) and Johan Andersson (CEO of Mellby Gård) are all backing the company again.

The funding will allow PocketLaw to further scale in the UK, where it launched in June 2021. Clients include tele-health pioneer Livi, e-scooter company Voi, and London’s Kingly Court restaurant Le Bab. In addition, PocketLaw will use the funding to expand internationally into more markets, and bolster its senior team with new hires, they said.

Since the beginning of 2021, PocketLaw has increased its revenues by nearly 500%, and also doubled its team to 25 in just one year. It has partnered with law firms including EBL Miller Rosenfalck and Fondia, as well as digital accounting firm, Bokio.

Kira Unger, PocketLaw CEO who co-founded the company with childhood friend Olga Beck-Friis, (pictured together in main photo), said: ‘The demand for our digital legal solution demonstrates just how problematic legal issues are for companies, taking up time, energy and money. We are the antidote to this, providing our customers with a tech-first solution that allows them to focus on the most important thing: growing their businesses.’

And Beck-Friis, COO and co-founder, added: ‘2021 has been a momentous year for us as a company – first we successfully launched within the UK after achieving market dominance in Sweden, we’re continually onboarding new customers, and now we have closed our latest round of seed financing that will enable us to further scale both within the UK, and around the world. The UK will continue to be a huge priority for us moving forward as we aim to become the go-to legal solution for businesses of all sizes.’