Client relationship management vendor Nexl on Friday (1 December) announced that it had raised $6.6m Series A funding co-led by Shearwater Capital and one of Nexl’s existing investors, Australian-based B2B venture capital firm EVP.
EVP was among the VC firms that invested in Nexl in only March this year, when the Australian-founded revenue operations platform raised a substantial $4m.
Legal IT Insider asked Nexl founder Philipp Thurner, who previously a legal solutions tech analyst at Australian law firm Gilbert + Tobin and has held roles at Janders Dean and LawAdvisor, whether it was unusual to raise again in the same year.
He told us: “It might be unusual but in our case it worked out really well. From when we signed the term sheet of the previous round to now, we nearly tripled our annual recurring revenue. We won some really big clients and there is no slowing down in sight.”
According to Thurner, the last funding round got a significant amount of VC attention and he says: “Then the right partners came along and we jumped on it.” EVP doubled their investment and Thurner says: “It’s also a great sign that law firms are investing more in relationship management and collaboration tools. There is a huge need and most existing solutions don’t fit law firms as well as ours.”
The company will use the funds to expand its presence in the United States.
In 2021, Nexl made its debut as a “no-data-entry” CRM, aiming to address the long-standing issue of inaccurate relationship data within legal CRM systems.
It works by capturing and mapping all relationships and interactions between firm members, prospects, and clients on an ongoing basis. It has also branched out into email marketing and collaboration tools.
Daniel Szekely, a partner at EVP, said: “Traditional sales-oriented CRMs are not effective in professional service firms. It is staggering that until today, law firms haven’t had a way to effectively track and manage client relationships using suitable Relationship Management. The large number of leading global firms taking on Nexl’s solution is a testament to the obvious call to market in the industry and an exceptional team that deeply understands the problem solution and has built a fit-for-purpose product delivering real value.”
caroline@legaltechnology.com