Belgian legal tech company and ELTA member Henchman announced today that it has closed a €6,5 million Series A funding round. The round is led by the U.S.-based Adjacent VC and German Acton Capital and joined by Conviction VC and several business angels (including the Founders of Belgian success story, Showpad and Collibra). The funding follows on the heels of Henchman’s recent GPT-3 integration and will be used to strengthen its focus on innovation and expand geographically.
Henchman solves a global problem for lawyers and legal professionals with its software: it intelligently gives access to legal teams’ previously written clauses and definitions. The founders, Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin, and Wouter Van Respaille started working on their legal tech solution during the COVID-pandemic. Henchman has been on a remarkable trajectory since its launch in June of 2021 and has experienced rapid adoption and growth over the past year: 750% revenue growth, more than 100 new customers in 15 different countries, and a team that grew from 12 to 35 employees.
Henchman helps the lawyer of the future provide added value and expertise. “When everyone was still talking about ChatGPT, we already started implementing the technology in Henchman,” says Gilles Mattelin, Founder of Henchman. With the AI-based functionality, lawyers can now use Henchman to enrich contracts with new suggestions, translations or grammatical adaptations.
“Today we have the all-star team, the drive and the entourage to maintain our technological lead in solving a global problem,” states Jorn Vanysacker, Founder at Henchman. The company intends to use the injection of capital to stay ahead of the competition and enter new markets.
To make that happen, the company brought some new investors on board: the U.S.-based Adjacent VC, which previously invested in companies such as BeReal, Revolut and Cowboy, and the German Acton Capital, which previously funded Clio and Etsy, are taking the lead in this investment round, with participation from several business angels, including Louis Jonckheere & Pieterjan Bouten (founders Showpad), Felix Van de Maele (founder Collibra) and Bram Couvreur (Partner at U.S.-based law firm Cooley).
“After a few reference calls it became clear that the power of Henchman is how perfectly the product fits into the legal professionals’ existing workflow. It is rare to see a SaaS company win international clients this early in its journey, but the teams’ customer obsession already drove adoption across Europe and in the US. I am excited to team up as we scale to the next level!” says Nico Wittenborn, Investor at Adjacent VC.
Louis Jonckheere, one of the private investors and founder of Showpad, is optimistic: “The legal profession is entering a new age with AI. I’m very bullish about Henchman’s ability to take a leading role in this transformation. They have the team, technology and traction to become a dominant global player.”
Koen Christiaens, managing partner at Pitchdrive, who led Henchman’s previous seed round adds: “More than a year ago, we saw how Henchman combined a clear product market fit with a very strong and high energy founding team which resulted in many happy new customers. Today there is clear momentum in AI contract drafting and Henchman is ready to conquer the world.”
For more information about Henchman’s contract drafting and negotiation solution, visit henchman.io.
