This week, we welcome Gabriela “Gaby” Isturiz—a serial entrepreneur, legal tech pioneer, and co-founder of The XX Fund. Gaby’s impressive background includes building multiple high-growth SaaS companies that were acquired by Fortune 500 firms, and her transition into venture capital has fueled a mission to support women-led startups. The conversation sets the stage by delving into the rapid evolution of legal tech, with a special focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI.

Gaby dives into the transformative impact of generative AI on the legal tech landscape. She highlights how startups are racing to adopt the latest AI capabilities yet warns that simply labeling a product as “AI-powered” does not guarantee success. Drawing on research that compared customer responses to landing pages with and without explicit AI mentions, she underscores the critical importance of balancing technological buzzwords with clear, tangible value propositions. For enterprise customers, the promise of AI must translate into concrete benefits rather than inflated expectations.

The discussion then shifts to the hurdles of scaling a legal tech business. Gaby explains that the journey from achieving problem-solution fit to securing product-market fit involves a series of challenges—from attracting early customers and retaining them, to navigating the complexities of scaling operations and talent acquisition. In an industry where incumbents hold significant distribution advantages, Gaby advises startups to adopt a laser-focused approach. By outperforming established players in specific niches and iterating rapidly, nimble startups can gain a foothold even against the so-called 800-pound gorillas of the market.

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring the mission behind The XX Fund. Gaby shares her personal journey—from leaving a high-paying role to build solutions that truly matter, to her realization that mentorship and strategic investment could empower the next generation of women founders. She explains how The XX Fund specifically targets early-stage tech and tech-enabled companies with valuations under $10 million, aiming to address the stark funding disparities faced by women-led ventures. Gaby’s passion for providing both capital and access resonates throughout the conversation, as she emphasizes that creating an inclusive ecosystem benefits the entire industry.

Looking ahead, Gaby offers a forward-looking perspective on the future of legal tech and professional services. She predicts that while technological advancements like AI will continue to disrupt workflows and streamline operations, the real challenge lies in mastering go-to-market strategies. Legal tech startups must not only innovate but also clearly communicate the value of their solutions to a market inundated with new tools and applications. Gaby’s crystal ball insight reminds us that success in this rapidly changing environment depends on a delicate balance between technological prowess and strategic customer engagement, ensuring that innovation translates into sustainable growth.

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Links:

Blue Sky: ⁠⁠@geeklawblog.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@marlgeb⁠⁠
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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

TRANSCRIPT

 

Marlene Gebauer (00:07)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.

Greg Lambert (00:14)
I’m Greg Lambert.

Marlene Gebauer (00:15)
So this week, Greg, we are joined by Gabriella “Gaby” Isturitz, a serial entrepreneurial in the legal tech space, co-founder of The Fund XX and founder multiple high growth software as a service companies acquired by Fortune 500 firms. Gaby, welcome to the Geek in Review.

Gaby Isturiz (00:33)
Thank you so much. Excited to be here with you guys.

Marlene Gebauer (00:36)
It’s good to see you again.

Greg Lambert (00:36)
Yeah,

we’re excited too. Yeah, you guys met at the TLTF.

Marlene Gebauer (00:40)
At TLTF, yeah. We were, I

was lucky enough to have lunch with her. I was told by number of people, it’s like, you have to have lunch with Gaby. I’m like, okay. And I’m so glad I did. We had such a wonderful conversation and I’m so glad you agreed to come on with us.

Gaby Isturiz (00:49)
That’s awesome.

Greg Lambert (00:56)
Yeah, so before we jump in and talk about The Fund XX let’s get into a little bit of a topic. since you do a lot with startups, we really wanted to kind of get your perspective on this.

Marlene Gebauer (01:10)
So with so much happening in the generative AI space, we’ve been really curious about how legal tech startups are responding to both the opportunities and the challenges it presents. So how do you think AI is changing the way startups position themselves to investors and users?

Gaby Isturiz (01:28)
That’s kind of like a dark question. And I would say there is so much going on in such a short time. So just in a weeks, we had the announcement of the Stargate project. What is it? 500 billion investment. The next week, we had OpenAI Operator. The next week, we have DeepSeek

So, right. So we, mean, completely shocked the world, So the next, we have a deep research, right. And then all other announcement from, you know, other big LLMs and all that. So, so much going on. Everybody has an opinion, Everybody has a crystal ball, but, being an entrepreneur, doing, investments, everything comes down to one thing.

enterprise customers do not care about your AI feature, period. And this is not popular. I was reading a research. And again, I’m talking about enterprise customers, B2B SaaS. I was reading super interesting research conducted by a consulting, a product consulting company. They interview about

767 business tech users, mostly blue collar. And they kind of like up, they wanted to validate the A labeling in the impact they had in the purchasing decisions. So right now, what we’re seeing, these startups, I mean, we’re AI power driven platform, We are the AI

So it’s this urge to label yourself as an AI player, whether and in whatever capacity to do it. So they say, okay, let’s research this and really understand what the customers do. So they went on, they did this research, they got, you know, yeah, like, and I’ll share with you the link because I think it’s fascinating. So they, they presented this up, just the users with two landing page.

two landing pages. One page, for example, and I’m going to read it, one of the landing page, it was for an in-to-in. One would say, you’re a generative AI power financial assistant, The other will say, you’re on-demand financial assistant, save time, stress, and make money. Okay? So one, it’s kind of like the super in-your-face AI power, AI-driven.

The other one, it’s more about the value. So what they find out, it was really fascinating. So rather than, you know, enhancing this perception using the term generative AI, it significantly lower the expectations of the product and the potential impact. Okay. So it could have been because, you know, people do not trust the technology yet, especially when we are talking about B2B enterprise.

And, but more surprisingly is that the, the, the customers didn’t feel they should pay more. Okay. So at the end of the day, Marlene, it all comes down. Are you adding value? Are you adding value to the customer? Are you solving their problems? And yes, kind of like a powering up your solution, utilizing AI. So now.

You know, founders will say, okay, everybody’s using it, We have this mobile. We even have the big like SalesForce With agentics, So you have already a hotspot. The big ones are using everything AI, And if I’m the small company, How come I’m not going to be using it? So my, my thoughts in this, it’s be incredibly mindful how you balance the jargon.

using AI driven and the value that you put in. Because at the end of the day, customers are buying on the value that you provide, not on the features that you deliver, And even though that, know, GenAI, AI itself, it’s a force multiplier.

Marlene Gebauer (06:06)
I have a couple of points and this sort of mirrors what you’re saying like in the legal space where you have clients asking firms, okay, if you have these tools, like what is the value you’re going to give to me on this? And I will say that honestly, I think firms are still kind of struggling to be able to crystallize that because they’re still just kind of getting their hands around how do we use this?

Gaby Isturiz (06:19)
See you later.

Marlene Gebauer (06:33)
and don’t really have anything that is concrete to be able to tell people. The other thing I was thinking was, you were mentioning things are just moving so fast, all these announcements, announcements, announcements, and things were moving fast before, and now they’re even moving faster. And for a while, at least in the legal tech space, we were seeing that…

startups were trying to at least be a little more transparent. were trying, they had like scores and accuracy scores and some were actually being more transparent about sort of how things work, how their stuff worked. And now I wonder is that gonna just be thrown by the wayside because it’s just moving too quickly to actually even do that.

Gaby Isturiz (07:23)
So I think the way that I see it’s too much output that we haven’t seen ever before. The ability to create product, it’s unprecedented. And it compounds in the other, in the past, technology revolutions, And that’s why now we’re able to do it.

But at the end of the day, it’s are firms, organizations, able to adopt, implement, and retain these technologies at the pace that this innovation is coming at you. remember, if we believe as founders and startups and scaling organizations that selling is hard,

I will argue that buying is harder, In your shoes, when you have all these myriad of technologies, Solving for an sliver of that, And chances are that you have probably not a formidable solution working right now, But obviously you have something that works. So for the new builders and the innovators,

that you really need to craft this balance between am I delivering a 10x feature, Am I delivering 10 times value for me to move these organizations to something, to this new frontier? Okay. And, and yeah, so that’s sad. I think that’s one of their biggest challenge and not just in legal tech, but professional services tech in general, which is very manual and very in people intensive.

practices.

Greg Lambert (09:20)
And I think that’s the, you know, hearing you talk about don’t sell the underlying product, but rather sell the value that the product is bringing is something that as a buyer, that’s probably my hardest explanation back to, you know, the partnership that says, okay, we want you to invest, you know, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars into a product. And it’s hard to say, but it’s got AI.

instead of saying, this is where you’re really gonna get your return on your investment. This is what the value is.

Well, thanks for going on the side journey with us on this. wanted to make sure that while we had you here, we kind of wanted to talk about that issue. now let’s switch over and talk about the Fund XX. So Gaby, what inspired you to co-found a venture capital fund? And how is the Fund XX unique in its mission to support women-led startups?

Marlene Gebauer (10:01)
Hahaha.

Gaby Isturiz (10:28)
Yeah, I think, and Greg, like many things in life, do just stumble upon that. And, it’s probably, it’s probably casual to say, but not that casual when you are intentional about it. Right. So, I sold you know, the last company, Roper/Aderant, bought that. And, so I was.

I woke up one day, was a, it was a, an initiative buyer. didn’t have to stay, with the company for, for long. And then I wake up one day, I didn’t have a job. Right. I, nobody wanted, what’s going to hire me. I wasn’t looking for, a position either. Right. And, and I’m sitting there, and I have a, and I have a non-compete that I cannot do the only thing that I knew to do professional.

right, which was a legal tech building and growing companies. I couldn’t do that. So, and then it’s like, okay, what do I do with all this knowledge that I have? Right now when I’m thinking I’m at my prime, right, and I cannot use it. And all of sudden, it was kind of like, the word got out, know, Gaby sold these companies, right, you know, very successful.

So I have these amazing diverse founders coming to me, hey, what do you think about this idea? Hey, and I immediately realized this is what I want to do with my life in this phase of my life. I want to help other women like me, minority Latinas like me to really be able to achieve the successes.

Right after I started writing my own checks, Investing in these founders, I became an angel investor. Then, you know, I became LP investor in different VC funds, private equity. And all of a sudden it’s like I have this opportunity to start a women fund run by, you know, women general partners and investing in women.

And so I was approached by two incredible investors and we immediately click. We were absolutely aligned in the mission that women are grossly underfunded in, in, in, in fast forward. So we started the fund fast forward. have made 30 amazing investments and now we’re about

to start our fund too.

Greg Lambert (13:18)
So I’m curious, what’s the criteria that you use when you’re evaluating the startups so that you of have a rule of thumb of what they’re doing that enables you to be comfortable in investing in them?

Gaby Isturiz (13:35)
Yeah, so first of all, they’re going to be at an earlier stage. So our VC fund only invests just because of the size of the fund as well. We only invest in earlier stage. And when I say earlier stage, it’s a pretty much first check in, pre-seed or seed, developing tech companies or tech enabled companies with valuations under $10 million.

to make the unit economic work for us, So why $10 million? Because we need to have meaningful participation in this round. So that’s kind of like the main criteria. Technology is clear, tech enabled, it’s a little bit more gray. For example, we invested in electric

Flauser first in the market. And, and obviously she’s, she’s growing like crazy and it’s tech enabled because she needs all these, technical infrastructure to be able to foster that growth. Right. So we are sector agnostic for as long as, you know, you are in tech or tech enabled, but a little bit more on, on kind of like up on the, on the second kind of like a, set of criteria.

that we look in, it’s the market where these innovations or these companies are playing our big enough. Why we needed to be big enough? Because there is something that is called these companies need to be fund returnable. Right? I mean, it’s very different. You know, I will invest in a company that is doing something great, You know, for their community. But it’s incredible. But as a fund, right, we need to

We’re looking for those outsized returns. And one of the key for that, it’s are you operating in a market where your time to addressable market is large enough for us. And then there are some other hate to say soft skills, But there are some other more intangibles, It’s how well the founder can sell their ideas, right? How well the level of energy, how responsive they are.

when they come into the meeting, did the research on all the GPs, Are we aligned in thesis as well? And there are some sectors that we don’t get in, Greg Marlene, which is FDA approved DeepTech because they’re heavy capital-demanding and does not apply for us to be.

Marlene Gebauer (16:27)
So Gaby, you’ve built two SaaS companies that were acquired by Fortune 500 companies. And I imagine there are lots you’ve experienced so much in doing that. And there’s probably lots of lessons to be learned for the rest of us. So what would you say was sort of the most challenging aspect of scaling these businesses?

Gaby Isturiz (16:54)
Jeez, everything. So, I mean.

Marlene Gebauer (16:55)
And I mean,

I know you have some great stories behind this, too.

Gaby Isturiz (17:01)
Yeah, think, I mean, getting to get into scale, the first thing it’s, you have to have a problem solution fit, It’s my solution, really solving problems, So that’s kind of like at the first hurdle. And then kind of like, just start figuring out some actions, You have some early customers, you have some design partners,

Okay, so there is a small group that, you know, they’re willing to, you know, use our product, we’re solving a problem for them and they also are willing to pay. So that’s kind of like at the first floor. Then it’s a, mean, these things called product market fit. Okay. Now you have a set of customer five to 10, So now can you get it to the next wave, Where they’re really paying for the services, but more importantly, can you retain them? Right. Because.

how many products you buy, you have on the shelf, because I mean, the product wasn’t mature enough, they didn’t have the services. So once you have, you know, a set of customers, and you’ve reached some financial milestones as well, You gotta be north one, two million dollars in revenue, So then you start, I mean, you’re exhausted, you’re doing all these, The next frontier is how do I scale these?

The challenge Marlene is scaling it’s what took you through this phase of achieving product market feed, being already been recognized as a brand, Or as a trusted vendor, it’s not gonna take you there, Why? The people that work for you or with you at the beginning, they bring a skillset that it’s probably for a nimble company, a startup, roll up your sleeves, do everything. For you to scale, you need to start

incorporating processes, procedures, methods, You need to start hiring people and you gotta do it in a very systematic way, So you need a new set of skills. People that have done companies taking it to $10 million in revenue, $20 million in revenue, and that changes completely the landscape. So for us, was retaining.

the capital, people capital, Acquiring a new set of skillset that we didn’t have, So because I mean, getting this and kind of like a learning a new game when you think you already nailed it, So you never do. So I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s a little bit of the challenges there.

Greg Lambert (19:48)
There was a couple of things that you said in there that I wanted to kind of pull on. I like when you talked about the problem solution fit. And the thing I really liked about it was the problem came first, then the solution, and then you also talked about the market fit. And so I know one of the things when you’re looking at a market is confronting.

the incumbents that may already be in the market. And you had a great article titled, Confronting the 800-pound gorilla, which talks about the strategies. Can you give a couple of strategies on how, on what you talked about dealing with incumbents that are in that market?

Gaby Isturiz (20:37)
Yeah, and that’s great question because I think that every builder or every founder has to have a little insight of what you’re dealing as you go off market. So in B2B SaaS, enterprise SaaS, chances are there’s always going to be an incumbent or a number of incumbents. Those are our 800-pound gorillas, In Legal Dev, we have the LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwers,

Thomson Reuters, Ropers, And now we have Litera and some others, And they’re there because they have gained the trust of the market and they also had the distribution. They have thousands of clients, So how do you, I mean, you’re building this company, you want to grow, you want to get to scale. How do you do that? Why they’re going to buy from me, If Thomson Reuters

It’s bigger, better, and faster. Never cheaper, of course. So the thing is, for founders, you really need to find one thing or a couple of things that you can do better than they do. So kind of like a big, laser focus when you’re doing this. And kind of like a little bit of an example, when we created eBilling Hub.

Marlene Gebauer (21:38)
Ha ha, nope.

Gaby Isturiz (22:03)
The incumbent had some products, but they were very kind of like a spreadsheet base, And very manual, So we’re really kind of like a concentrated in this sliver, how we do that better than them. So we have the upper hand. And I say we, the start of the nimble of, you know, builders, because we can iterate through problems a lot faster.

the incumbent, you got to put a business case, you have the analyst, they have to approve the business case, then they have to find the budget. And while they’re doing all that, right, we already have 10 new features, Great. So, but how do you really win this game, Greg? It’s a you got to beat them. I mean, this is a little bit of the David and the Goliath, So you got to beat them in the market, And you beat them in the market with one caveat that I’m going to tell you.

So to beat them in the market, it’s by getting into their market share. So when you start getting all these firms, they’re satisfied. They go and talk to the company and said, can you integrate with them? Right. So they have a great product. Now you get the attention and immediately do you become an acquisition target. It’s a playbook that almost always works with a caveat. Number one.

And it’s important to know because the way the speed that technology is moving right now, This is very, it’s a shift into how the 800 pound gorillas and the innovation used to work, So one caveat is they need to be competitive in some set of their organizations.

So they will buy probably a less mature solution, Just to buy their tech, their team, and that’s typically called an accuhire. It could be very compelling for the startup, But also you might be as a founder, be living money or some opportunities on the table because you haven’t been able to be the risk enough either market share

get the revenues, get the growth, to get evaluations that we all dream. But I think the most important thing, it’s the incumbent always, it’s kind of like on the driver’s seat because they have the distribution. So I have to get my database, my CRM of 4,000 law firms to sell, they already selling to them. Pretty much everybody that I want to sell to, they’re already in that.

So that’s when they own the distribution. What happens right now is with the ease of building product, getting it to market, because all the AI, And I will double click on something to make the case of how fast product development is going, So the incumbents are already creating their own AIs, So why do I have to wait

Marlene Gebauer (25:11)
you

Gaby Isturiz (25:21)
for this company that Gary created three years to the risk, Or four years to the risk. Because before, it was gonna take me five, six years to do this, And I will have to derive kind of like reroll my resources that I don’t have, Right now, the incumbents are really creating amazing products, Equally as fast as startups,

Case in point, Salesforce, HotSpot They’re putting these agents, They have all these that are absolutely outpacing as well some of the AI, you know, powered by AI startups. So it’s a different game. It’s fascinating, but the game is changing quickly. Make sense?

Greg Lambert (26:11)
Yeah,

one quick follow up to that one.

So there was a time, and I think there was a long time, where startups would do what you’re talking about, where they would be very good in one particular segment in the market. And then there was almost a routine that you would see, and that was they would create it, would then get it acquired by a larger company, they would ride out the two or three year non-compete.

And then they would go right back into the market and essentially create the same product over again. And I think of Accurant and TLO as a good example of that in the legal industry. Is that something that you think that is still achievable or do you think the market with AI is changing so fast that that type of, know, build, sell, repeat?

Can that still be done?

Gaby Isturiz (27:17)
I don’t believe so. I don’t believe so because of the whole thing that I see with AI. AI is also rethinking the way the old way approach to problems was done.

Greg Lambert (27:21)
Okay.

Gaby Isturiz (27:45)
not only that, right, but it’s also exposing new workflows, right, new ways to approach workflows, right, new ways that, I mean, it’s not a repeat of what was done before. So what I do see possible, and now, you know, my non-compete is out, right, I still see immense amount of opportunities, but you cannot do, kind of like redo it again, Today, you really have to,

have a vision of a five years out, which is probably in today’s day, very long, as opposed to try to redo the same because they couldn’t sell it as well as you did, So is that make sense?

Marlene Gebauer (28:27)
Yeah, does. So I’m going to switch topics a little bit to billing in the legal industry. So there are many products out there. I’ve looked at a number of these that are focused on billing, automatically putting together pre-bills, on capturing time.

Gaby Isturiz (28:38)
I love that.

Marlene Gebauer (28:57)
that can impact the billable model, some of these other tools that we see out there that sort of speed, just sort of getting your base level of work together. That can impact, you know, the billable model. know, how do you see these changes playing out? I know I talked about this like last year and I was like, yeah, it’s gonna be over. And it’s like, it’s not over yet.

Greg Lambert (29:20)
Yeah. Yeah. We were planning on three episodes of how the bill, the billable hour was dead this year, but,

Marlene Gebauer (29:20)
So I’m wondering, we were so happy, but

it didn’t play out or it hasn’t yet. So I’m curious, what are your thoughts for the future on that?

Gaby Isturiz (29:37)
Yeah, even when I got in in legal tech, which is probably 17, 20 years ago, the bill of a lower was dead by then. And, and actually it was about to die 20 years prior to that. Right. So case in point, the billable hour has shown all of us that is incredibly resilient, right. No matter what happened, it stays there. Right.

So, and again, I mean, we see, you know, more alternative AFAs And those type of things. But I think if you kind of like peel the onion, the core that we cannot ignore is the nature of professional services. I mean, it’s very different, you know, I sell technology that, you know, print pages, Or help you with contacts, So when…

In professional services, it’s not just legal, You have legal accounting, consulting, engineering. What you’re selling is your time, Your time is your product, That’s what you get paid for, So based on this business model, I’ll give you time, you give me money, So it’s not like I give you time and you give me cows, no, So, right?

So, or, or, or you give me a timeshare. No. Right. So if this exchange of my work for mine, right. So with that, I do believe that there are going to be evolutions because of the pressure that AI is putting on optimization, right. It’s workflow optimization, especially professional services. So.

I entirely believe that a lot of the repetitive tasks and everybody’s talking about And we all know when we go to panels and, you know, we keep repeating the same thing. So the trend it’s, you know, a lot of the commoditized task, thanks to AI, They’re going to be priced, you know, as a commodity, I’m do this in VA, right? I do this operating agreement. the incremental

which is still, it has to be reviewed by a qualified expert, a lawyer, an accountant. The value of that time is going to be premium. And we’re going to see probably increases in the billable hour for those that can do it. So at some point, this is the trick, at some point, you can squeeze much from a client.

So at some point you can continue to increase this value. So what is left, right, it’s how you’re going to continue your profit per partners, So you can only squeeze this so much, you can only fine tune this much, but you have all the other coffees, operations, and operational efficiencies. And I think that’s the real angle.

and wedge for professional services, leveraging AI, which is how we can do more processes that are more efficient, how we can reduce our expenses, How we can optimize our workflows. If I was using, you know, these many tools, resources, people, How can I start using agents or the like?

to really maintain my margins, right, but reducing the cost. And I think that’s the play in professional services right now.

Marlene Gebauer (33:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’m kind of thinking the agentic workflow is like as we kind of automate that workflow.

Gaby Isturiz (33:43)
And

it’s something beautiful. So we started out with our PAs, the robotics, process automation. Then we have the agents. Now we have the intelligent agents. And now we have the agents that manage the other agents. But what makes it really, really real is things like operator. So a lot of the functions in you guys live and breathe.

Marlene Gebauer (33:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gaby Isturiz (34:12)
you know, all these operations, a lot of that, it’s going to websites, You know, looking at data here, So all that, it’s already in our fingertips. I was playing with operator, I gave them a list of things of websites, just go into the research. It’s not perfect. It’s only been out for, you know, a couple of weeks or something like that. But the capabilities, it’s incredibly stellar.

what they can do for you. Imagine things like e-Building, So, e-Building, Part of what e-Building was doing, it was going to all the different websites, your invoices. e-Filing, you’ve got to go to all these websites, submitting the invoices, And in the other side, it’s, yes, startups really, really need to be aware of these capabilities.

to match it, you you have the tech to match it with the right problem, You have the solution to match it with the right problem. But the next, there is a new frontier that is also coming from within the firms, So the firms have very similar capabilities that my startup has, So, you know, that’s something, it used to be the days that

Hey, remember, you know, build versus buy, That was crazy, How can you cannot build, And, and actually we use it in the, even with the billing hub, I mean, how come you’re going to be all your own, That’s the days of the building versus buying is that right. And SAS we have all the servers, So right now it’s a, it’s a different game. We think the innovative organizations.

I see a lot of potential for them leveraging existing tools within the boundaries of security, privacy and all that to build themselves.

Marlene Gebauer (36:16)
And you’re seeing that. You’re seeing that already happening. And that wouldn’t, you that would not have, you would not have seen the people that are capable of doing that, you know, as part of your employee roster a few years ago.

Gaby Isturiz (36:18)
Yep. Yeah.

And that’s all the tools and all the tech to build new tech. It’s been so democratized that you have the same capabilities that I might have in my startup, You have a great talent. I have also great talent. For example, look at Cursor. I mean, they do

They create this AI incredible company doing a code editing code. In two years, right. They’re predicted to go to a hundred million in revenue. Okay. They just close a hundred million round. Okay. A seed round. Right. So I told you that our seed rounds were no more than $10 million in valuation, So this is a hundred million.

a dollar round based on almost $3 billion valuation as it runs. So that is just not fluff, It’s because the value that they are bringing to the market for developers, it’s so immense, That, you know, the market is willing, the developers, the market is willing to pay for all that, To get that value to expedite the creation of technology today.

So it’s fascinating times.

Greg Lambert (37:57)
So I wanna go back briefly to the Fund XX and really kind of talk about something that I think is your personal journey and the mentorship that you are bringing to.

Gaby Isturiz (38:03)
Thank

Greg Lambert (38:16)
companies that you’re investing in and others. So I know that you’ve coached many women and other minority founders. What do you personally get out of, I’m sure there’s an enjoyment to that as well. Can you talk about your experience with the mentorship part of it and how that kind of influences your approach to investing as well as mentoring?

Gaby Isturiz (38:46)
Yeah, and thank you for that question. I appreciate that. So, Greg, I will start it out for putting a little bit into perspective, the market. And last year in 2024, 190 billions were deployed by VCs in different stages. 190 billion. Out of that 190 billion, 3 % dollar-wise went to women.

In terms of deal count, 6 % of deals involved women founders or all women teams, 6%. And then 15 % of the deals that got VC money were mixed teams. Okay? So still, there is a big, big gap.

to level set entrepreneurship for women. So what I get most joy, it’s a how can we support the next generation of women builders that really have incredible ideas, understand a problem, can bring a solution to that, But they need two things.

Capital and access and I think the most rewarding thing that I’ve done in this life, it’s what we’re doing at the PhonicsX, which is we provide capital. Always is never enough, but also we provide access. access is one of the things that I think we all have to continue supporting and providing.

And because with access, can network, have better access to customers, to funding, and those type of things. And that’s the journey that we are on.

Greg Lambert (40:56)
I’m gonna bring up a third rail issue here. I know that there’s a big push in the new presidential administration to kind of frame the topic that you don’t need special access for people, that the market should kind of guide this on its own.

you’re a little bit different in that you’re private company that’s doing this and not a government entity, but you hear a lot of pushback on being focused in on minority interest or women-owned companies. So how do you argue the other side of that and say, and I think you’ve hit on it quite a bit with the

funding and access, how do you have that conversation to say, we don’t have the right amount of funding and access at this point, that this is something that is needed in the market when you have people that are arguing the other side that this is not needed?

Gaby Isturiz (42:12)
Yeah, and yes, it’s within us, running a fund as a VC that is focused on investing in women. This is something that right now is top of mind, Greg. So we are kind of like rethinking options, strategies in…

It’s kind of like everybody’s entitled to their opinion, also, you know, but the facts are the facts, So, the 6 % of deals for, you know, a hundred and 90 billion, it really tells a story that, you know, we gotta be intentional to provide more opportunities for women in venture.

in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. again, we may label it in a different way, Just to be more comprehensive in our approach, More encompassing, which is great. But I think the mission is how we can impact more women and change the numbers.

Marlene Gebauer (43:36)
So mean, would you say sort of the access and funding are probably the biggest challenges for the women led startups in the next few years?

Gaby Isturiz (43:47)
I think, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s money. It’s, it’s money. And, I didn’t talk about, but, but the, the, the funding, the funding challenge, it’s, it’s twofold on one end, not enough capital is deployed, for, for women.

and mixed teams. But on the other hand, is the fund managers like me, we only represent less than 12 % of the investment managers. So let’s say one of every 10, you have a woman making investment decisions. So one of the narrative that we’re also changing at the Phonic Sex, about 90 % of our piece are women.

So we also want to present opportunity for more women to understand this asset class as an opportunity for them to invest. And when we are intentional, bringing more dollars and dollar from women into the ecosystem, think the playing field is starting to level in a little bit more.

So it’s not just the funding to the entrepreneurs and to the founders, but also how can we bring more women into the investment, which is still, it’s not large enough. In this asset class, there is something beyond the stock market for women.

Greg Lambert (45:35)
Let me not, go ahead Marlene. Yeah, before we get to the crystal ball, I wanna kinda, I wanna reset this, cause I feel like that was kind of a downer question. So let me flip it. so Gaby, looking back at your career, what would you say has been one of the most significant moments in your growth?

Marlene Gebauer (45:37)
Did you have another question? Because I was going to do crystal ball.

Greg Lambert (46:04)
what you’ve done.

Gaby Isturiz (46:07)
I think, and I’m sure that many women founders can relate, it’s when I made a decision, before I started Evelyn Hub, I was working, I was kind of like the CIO of a large insurance defense firm in Western Pennsylvania. And I think that moment, it’s when I made the decision, I’m gonna leave my high paying job.

I believe in what I’m doing is going to bring enormous value. So I left my job. I was starting a family, I didn’t have the income that I used to because I believe so much in this opportunity, so much in myself that it really transformed everything. So on one end.

I had this opportunity to really create this solution within a firm that I loved and I owe them a lot. But also it was this transformational moment of growth. Okay, if I really want to do this, right, I have to jump, I get to believe, you know, I cannot look at everything as an obstacle and really believe that, you know, we can do this.

That was like 17 years ago, 15 years ago. It was well worth it. And probably Greg, before that, it was also living in Venezuela. So I left, from Caracas, Venezuela originally, and I left my country in 1996 to look for better opportunities. So that was kind of like you know, a transformational.

moment for me. And now I’m more American than or as American as you guys with an accent.

Greg Lambert (48:10)
I was going say I could tell that Western

Pennsylvania accent.

Marlene Gebauer (48:13)
Yeah, it comes right out.

Gaby Isturiz (48:14)
I know, I know, I know.

Yeah, appreciate that.

Marlene Gebauer (48:20)
Alright,

so Gaby, this is the time for our crystal ball question where we ask all our guests to look into the future in their crystal balls and sort of share what they see. And I’m curious, what do you think the biggest challenges and opportunities are? I’m gonna say for sort of legal tech.

in law firms we’ve we’ve talked a lot about the opportunities for for women but i just wanna kind of know in general what you know what do you think we’re gonna see and what should we be prepared for

Gaby Isturiz (48:57)
Yeah, I mean, we kind of like a touch on that through the conversation. But I think for the builders, for the creators of technology, or especially legal tech, professional services tech, the things that the real thing that needs to be mastered is not the tech itself, it’s go to market. So

Like we were chatting about, it’s never been easier to really create amazing tech in the history of humankind. So, as it gets commoditized, it proportionally or even exponentially the complexity to figure out the right go-to-market motions, the complexity to acquire and retain customers.

It’s the name of the game for the creators of tech, startups, vendors, and all that. For firms and organizations, it’s how do you choose between all these sea of applications, solutions popping up every day, Are you guys equipped?

to evaluate these technologies? Do you have frameworks, policies, and even procedures of how you’re going to evaluate in the time that we are right now? And you are not relying on the playbooks that you have five years ago, 10 years ago, or even three years ago. So it’s a velocity game. But I think it goes back to the fundamentals.

For app startups, it’s are you adding enough value? And do you know what it takes to really differentiate yourself? It’s all about positioning, So, and when you do this right, you position yourself in the eyes of the customer. So, you make easier for the customer to buy your solution. And that’s what you guys want on the buyer’s seat,

And that is the challenge for all the emerging companies and even established vendors. So it’s mastering your positioning, your messaging, and your Google Market Strategies.

Greg Lambert (51:38)
Very good. Well, Gabriella, is Doris? yeah. Yeah, does. And now I know what to do.

Marlene Gebauer (51:40)
Easy peasy.

Gaby Isturiz (51:41)
Exactly.

Marlene Gebauer (51:46)
Got it

Gaby Isturiz (51:46)
Exactly.

Marlene Gebauer (51:48)
all worked out, right?

Greg Lambert (51:50)
All right, well, Gabriella Estorrez from the XX Fund. I want to thank you very much for coming in and joining us on the Geek in Review. It’s been great having you here.

Gaby Isturiz (52:01)
Thank you for having me, Marlene and Greg, appreciate it.

Marlene Gebauer (52:05)
And thanks to all of you, our listeners, for taking the time to listen to the Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn.

Greg Lambert (52:15)
Yeah, and I actually changed the blue sky to, what is it? It’s a geek law blog is now. So it’s our URL. So we’re on blue sky as well. Gaby, we’ll put links in the show notes. And I know there was a couple of things that you had mentioned. We’ll make sure those are out there. But what’s the best way for people to learn more about the Fund XX or to connect with you?

Marlene Gebauer (52:24)
Yeah.

Gaby Isturiz (52:28)
nice.

I think it’s good to my LinkedIn and you can see my newsletter, Build Legal Tech. You can learn more about the Fund XX And yes, and DM me if you’re building something great, have ideas, Or just want to geek out about tech, you know, you can DM me. Pleasure to be here.

Greg Lambert (53:05)
All right.

Nice.

Marlene Gebauer (53:08)
Great. And

as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSica. Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert (53:13)
Thanks, Jerry. All right, talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer (53:15)
Bye.