The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20VC: 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days and Choosing Benchmark | Harvey vs Legora: Who Wins Legal and How to Play When You Have $600M Less Funding | Are AI Models Plateauing Today | Building a 9-9-6 Culture From Stockholm with Max Junestrand
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Aug 15, 2025 
Max Junestrand, Co-Founder and CEO of Legora, transitioned from a potential gaming career to revolutionizing legal tech with AI. He shares how he raised $120M—just a fraction of his competitor's $800M—while still outpacing them in innovation. Max discusses the challenges of scaling against well-funded rivals, the unique culture of the 9-9-6 work model in Sweden, and whether AI models are truly plateauing. He also reveals the pivotal coffee meeting that saved his startup during Y Combinator.
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Prioritize Post-Sales Over New Sales
- Deploy a larger CS and post-sales team than new sales to ensure clients extract value and stick.
- Embed domain experts with customers to reduce friction from untechnical users.
Paying For Lawyer Lunches
- Max paid dozens of lawyers for lunches to learn the trade and get candid feedback on legal workflows.
- Many lawyers declined payment but provided rich operational knowledge that shaped product decisions.
Hire For Slope And Curiosity
- Hire for slope (growth potential) and curiosity rather than past prestige or Y-intercept.
- Test curiosity in interviews by asking candidates to show recent nerdy projects or LLM experiments on their phone.
