A former attorney with McKinnon Patten & Associates, Jamie Peebles quickly learned the contract writing process was tedious and time-consuming. So, he taught himself to code and launched Knuula.
After making multiple iterations of the Frisco-based smart contract software company’s tech, Peebles said the company has been seeing more traction amid the pandemic. And it’s kicked off a new $500,000 fundraising effort as it looks to continue its growth.
“There hasn't been any true large-scale innovation for how you make a document. And think that we can make a platform that gives people the best document creation experience possible,” Peebles, who also serves as president, said. “We can be somewhat of a contract marketplace, where all those templates exist in one place, pretty much anything you can come up with that your business might need.”
With a focus on the public accounting industry, the subscription-based Knuula aims to automate the engagement letter process, allowing users to select from a range of pre-drafted, customizable templates. Users can then add multiple clients to send the contracts to for e-signature. Peebles said he expects to have about 50 templates on the platform by the end of the year. He added that around 6,000 contracts have been made via the software and, without disclosing specifics, said it’s been seeing a month-to-month revenue increase by around 20%.
“Right around November, December of 2020, we made enough improvements. We really improved the drafting process, the contract creation process enough where people got it. And we had like 1,000 contracts made in one month,” Peebles said. “We're in a good position for what the pandemic kind of brought, which is the remote working world.”
Peebles said the pandemic and large shift to remote and hybrid work has accelerated Knuula’s business. He said the startup is working on finalizing a bulk license deal with an “established” professional liability insurance company that has the potential to propel Knuula to profitability.
“It's beyond proof of concept, beyond product-market fit. Being accepted by an established professional liability insurance company would be the biggest stamp of approval for this platform,” Peebles said.
Writing the code for Knuula was “Plan F” for Peebles when he launched the company in 2018. He said initial plans were to make a demo, then raise funding. However, he found the users weren’t using the platform to create contracts, and after about seven months, an investor backed out of a deal. The company’s changes to the software did attract the attention of one user. Emmett Castro, an accounting firm owner in California and one of the first 200 users on the Knuula platform, became an investor after several conversations with Peebles via email and Knuula’s chatbot feature. Peebles said Castro has now provided about half of the $370,000 the company has raised so far.
With the $500,000 round Knuula is currently looking to raise, Peebles said the company would focus on developing its software and creating more contract templates. To help do so, he said the company would be looking to hire two software developers, which would bring Knuula’s headcount to six. He added that as the company grows, it plans to add contract templates that will cover more general business uses to target industries outside of public accounting.
“The good thing for our growth plan is all we have to do to grow is add new templates to the platform that cover other industries,” Peebles said. “So come early 2022, we're going to try to add about 50 different templates that cover a lot of professional services so that we can branch off into professional service marketing in general. Then, shortly after that, within the first six months of the year, we're going to try to add a lot more contracts that cover more general business.”
