Austin legaltech company CS Disco Inc. late July 20 boosted its initial public offering stock price to $32 per share, up from $29 per share, with plans to sell 7 million shares. And on July 21 shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, opening at about $44 and hovering between $40 and $45 most of the day.
At the stock's high point, the company, which trades under the ticker symbol "LAW," had a $2.5 billion market capitalization, MarketWatch reported.
Shares closed at $41 apiece.
Speaking by phone from the NYSE, Disco founder and CEO Kiwi Camara said that standing on the podium, ringing the bell and seeing his company go public was "a magical moment." He said he set out to build a public company from the start.
Disco arranged travel to New York for a bunch of employees and investors. Camara said it was the first time many of them had seen each other in person since the beginning of the pandemic. They had dinner and drinks on the floor of the NYSE the evening of July 20. On the morning of July 21, when Camara rang the exchange's opening bell, more than 100 employees were able to watch a livestream of the event from Disco headquarters in Austin and remote locations.
"There's nothing quite like it that I've experienced as an entrepreneur," he said.
Disco was founded in 2013 out of Camara's law office in Houston. The company uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to help legal teams discover and catalog evidence, documents and other materials.
"If you look at what our customers do, they've used our software to help get out the truth in some of the most important legal matters in the world, from the opioid epidemic litigation, to the 737 Max crashes to the U.S. presidential election," Camara said. "And that's one of the most fulfilling things about being here, the sense that we're working on helping great lawyers find the truth in the most important legal matters in the world."
Camara said he enjoyed seeing shares "pop" from the IPO price and that the returns for early investors are "pretty awesome."
Among them is Austin's LiveOak Venture Partners, which was one of the primary drivers for Camara to move Disco to Austin from Houston in 2018. He said LiveOak invested in Disco at about a $10 million valuation. LiveOak's Krishna Srinivasan will now be chairman of the company's board.
"I think it's a great home run for LiveOak and also for many of our other early investors, and I hope that it's going to be kind of catalyst for more exciting startups and investments in the Austin ecosystem, of which we're very proud to be a part," Camara said.
Camara also saw the IPO as a milestone for the emerging legal-technology sector.
"We really view the IPO as laying claim to the space of legal technology," he said. "We were lucky enough to get ticker symbol LAW. Of course, that's largely symbolic, but I think it says something about what we're aspiring to do here at Disco, which is to use technology to strengthen the rule of law and to build products, and help legal departments and lawyers improve legal outcomes for their clients."
Camara said many of Disco's customers are general counsels at some of the largest companies across a variety of industries.
"I think for them having Disco be a public company helps to increase our credibility, even more, as they think about who they want to partner with, in terms of legal technology over the next five or 10 years," he said.
Disco recorded $68.4 million in revenue in 2020 and a net loss of $23 million, compared with 2019 revenue of $48.6 million and a net loss of $29.8 million. At the end of March, it had 336 full-time employees.
The Disco IPO came just a few days after another Austin company, fitness franchise F45 Training, went public on the NYSE.
