Prototron has a new supporter, Avokaado, who helps teams in the legal maze of contracts. Avokaado is a digital platform for managing contracts from creation to signing and storage/archiving. Does a startup need such a thing?
But let’s look at the standard problems when working with contracts.
Can’t write a legal text?
There are entrepreneurial and smart people around you, but none of them have a law degree, and you get a headache when you have to read the travel insurance contract. We will not even talk about the terms of use for apps downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play here.
The Avokaado solution: Choose a contract basis prepared by lawyers and rely on the content and logic already prepared when drafting the contract. There is no need to think about legal wording and links. Based on your idea and business needs, Avokaado does the rest.
Is it difficult to keep track of the current status of a contract because you do not have the necessary information about the customer at the correct moment?
Right now, does Stiina have it, or was Sander the last one to handle it? It should not be that difficult because there are only three of you in this company. In addition, a few changes had already been made to the document, and several versions of the same contract are circulating. You are no longer sure if you are correcting the latest version of the contract because Sander just came to the office with a question that was changed in the document four days ago.
The Avokaado solution: The entire contract is drafted online, and the role of the editor can be transferred in the collaboration. In addition, there is a chat for prompt discussions. Imagine the power of Google documents with the ability of lawyers to make contracts perfect. Each document has an activity log, meaning all activities and creators are visible, and you can jump back to the previous version without having three to four or fifty different contracts in progress. And what makes Avokaado especially convenient for startups – digital signing takes place on the same platform – whether you need to sign with a partner from Singapore or a colleague from Latvia – you no longer have to invent how to obtain a signature for a necessary document and download documents from one system to another.
Contracts keep disappearing.
We do not know whether they are escaping from desk drawers and filing cabinets at night or are being nicked by aliens, but on average, 10% of the contracts created have … – just like the end of the sentence – disappeared.
The Avokaado solution: All contracts are in one safe place with a clear overview and are accessible from anywhere. Now, instead of looking for contracts with Sander and Stiina, you can happily lounge with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake and dream on the company’s development directions, and by the way, send a reminder to Kalle that the document has still not been signed. You can do all this from your phone.
Contracts are part of the company’s bloodstream, so we should think at the outset about how it would work in a way that is controllable, transparent, and scalable like any other function. For example, if you conclude at least ten contracts each month, it will make 120 contracts a year, which in turn will make at least 120 deadlines to keep in mind. The last study I read revealed the startling figure that, on average, companies lose 10% of their contracts. So, where do they disappear? Of course, you might think that oh never mind, we will deal with it when we are big, we get investors’ money, and other excuses to help ignore it. But if there are problems with blood circulation, the company’s health condition will also suffer. People exchange and together with them leaves the information that remained in their e-mails, in addition to the risks arising from the legal content. It is much more difficult to sort out the confusion later than to start in a thought-out manner, right at the beginning.
-Mariana, Founder and CEO of Avokaado