DISCO Raises $18.575M Series C
July 22, 2016
Investment to drive further growth and innovation in legal technology.
Legal technology company CS Disco Inc. today closed $18.575M in Series C funding. The Stephens Group, a private equity firm, led the round, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and LiveOak Venture Partners. This brings total investment in DISCO to more than $35M.
DISCO’s next-generation ediscovery platform has seen rapid adoption among litigation boutiques and the AmLaw 200. More and more law firms are switching to DISCO as a preferred solution firmwide.
“We see DISCO as an emerging leader in the ediscovery market and look forward to how this new Series C funding will fuel continued expansion and help DISCO meet growing customer demand,” said James Rosenthal, director of litigation services with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.
DISCO will use this investment to accelerate the release of new features, including the DISCO machine learning platform; grow its sales presence in major U.S. cities, including its new sales team focused on corporate legal departments; and expand its complementary professional services offerings.
“I am excited by even faster, cutting edge analytic innovations added to DISCO’s already impressive, easy to use platform,” said Gordon Calhoun, partner and chair of the electronic discovery, information management & compliance practice at Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith LLP. “DISCO is poised to impact legal technology dramatically.”
“DISCO delivers unprecedented transparency for corporate legal departments in a solution that outside counsel are also delighted to adopt,” said Colin Ward, associate general counsel at communications company ViaSat, Inc. “DISCO’s approach to search, review, workflow, and metrics is excellent and incredibly simple to use.”
Aaron Clark, managing director at The Stephens Group, will join DISCO’s board of directors. “We are excited to partner with DISCO in realizing its vision of a comprehensive technology platform for the practice of law,” Clark said. “DISCO uniquely combines world class engineering with a deep, companywide understanding of what lawyers do and how to make lawyers successful. There is an opportunity here to build a large and enduring technology company in the legal vertical.”
Revenue grew 145% year over year between June 2015 and June 2016. “I am delighted by this continued validation of our approach to legal technology,” said CEO Kiwi Camara. “What excites us at DISCO is our mission of using technology to improve legal outcomes and the experience of practicing law for both lawyers and their clients. We are in the middle of a technological revolution in the way legal services are delivered. I think there’s no more exciting place one could be right now in the law than at the heart of that revolution.”
About the Stephens Group
The Stephens Group is a private, family-owned firm investing its capital in companies with exceptional management teams and high returns on invested capital in growing industries. The principals of The Stephens Group have over 80 years of history in successfully investing in both minority and control positions across multiple industries. The Stephens Group, through its affiliates, has large positions in energy services, gas exploration and production, media, communications, consumer, manufacturing, and other industries.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage, hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, Cambridge, New York, Bangalore, Herzliya, and Sao Paulo. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like Pinterest, Twilio, Box, LinkedIn, Shopify, Yelp, Skype, and Cornerstone OnDemand. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public. Learn more at www.bvp.com and follow us on Twitter@BessemerVP.
About LiveOak Venture Partners
LiveOak Venture Partners is a Texas-based, early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs who use disruptive technologies and business models to challenge the status quo. While many of their investments begin at the seed stage, LiveOak is a full lifecycle investor focused on technology and technology-driven service companies primary based in Texas and the Southwest. For over a decade, the founders of LiveOak have helped entrepreneurs create over $1.5B of enterprise value through investments in industry-leading companies, such as Spatial Wireless (acquired by AlcatelLucent), Navini Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems), LifeSize Technologies (acquired by Logitech) and Mavenir Systems.
About DISCO
As the leading provider of software as a service solutions developed by lawyers for lawyers, DISCO is reinventing legal technology to automate and simplify complex and error prone tasks that distract from practicing law. DISCO has been embraced by more than 400 law firms, including 50 of the AmLaw 200, as their first choice for innovative technologies that help great lawyers and their teams secure justice and win cases.