Running a business isn’t for the faint of heart. According to a survey by Fundera, small business owners tend to work a lot harder and earn a lot less than the average worker, with 81% working nights and 89% working weekends.
The only thing crazier than running a business: doing it while you’re in school.
Enter George Simons, an MBA candidate at Brigham Young University, law school fellow, professional writer, and co-founder of multiple companies. One of the companies he’s running is SoloSuit, which helps people respond to their collection lawsuit. The software used by SoloSuit was developed in 2017 by LawX, the legal design lab George participated in at BYU law school.
While running a company, working several jobs, and going to school at the same time might seem crazy, George is using his position to inform his entrepreneurial inclinations. As he’s studied and worked with a bunch of companies, he’s seen his fair share of mistakes and is continually using what he’s seen to inform how he runs SoloSuit.
Here’s what George says companies should think about in their early stages.
Have a clear problem you’re trying to fix
First things first: make sure your product or service solves a common problem. This is the best way to ensure your idea has legs and people will use it.
In SoloSuit’s case, George’s LawX design lab noticed that “every year, 54,000 people in Utah are sued for debt. That makes up over half of all the cases in the state. In pretty much all of the cases, the defendant would lose the case simply because they didn’t respond to the lawsuit.”
When the class saw that, they immediately knew they could help a lot of people by creating a tool that would help these people respond to their lawsuits. To date, SoloSuit has already helped 1,100 people, saving them over $2.1 million.
Pick the right law firm
As a law student, George knows first-hand how important it is to find the right law firm for your business. After all, they are the people that’ll help you form your company, walk you through the fundraising process, and more.
The problem: there are a ton of different options out there. From self-serve platforms like Clerky to full-fledged firms, it can be difficult to choose.
In order to overcome choice paralysis, George recommends really thinking about what your preferences are and what your business needs. For example, he knew he wanted a tech-enabled law firm that would help him streamline processes. He explains, “since I’m doing a JD/MBA, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about the inefficiency of most legal processes, and I’m very aware of how the quality of lawyer work can vary.”
This led him to Savvi Legal (where he worked previously), which “is a combo of a law firm and a tech platform,” explains Samantha Scott, a General Counsel there. “Our tech platform automates a lot of the standardized legal documents like entity formations and equity grants.”
Even better, the price was right for a small company like SoloSuit. “We have lawyers that can provide customized services, but a lot of it is standardized to keep the cost down for startups,” Samantha notes.
To learn more about how SoloSuit works with Savvi, download our case study:
Download the Case Study
