Female-led Streamline AI Raises $3M to Supercharge How Business Teams Work, Starting with Legal

Today Streamline AI, the only intelligent intake platform for in-house legal teams, officially launches with $3M in seed funding led by Oceans Ventures, alongside participation from Scribble Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), and other firms. Led by co-founder & CEO Kathy Zhu, a former commercial lawyer who left DoorDash to build this business process optimization platform, Streamline AI delivers visibility and metrics across G&A business units starting with the costliest problem: legal teams.

“Legal teams are often the scapegoat for business latency, but the real problem is not the lawyers or G&A teams–it’s their lack of tools and technology,” says Zhu. “Other departments have software to manage workflows, report metrics, and make data-driven decisions, but nothing like this was available for legal teams. I knew if I could use software to eliminate manual work, reduce escalations, and let my team focus on what matters, it wouldn’t just make them happier–it would increase the bottom line for the entire company.”

Legal’s “Black Box” Problem. Businesses are desperate for visibility, metrics, and better productivity, particularly around legal work. What’s more, the pandemic has increased attrition for skilled workers. Chaotic intake is a widely recognized pain point for in-house teams, and expensive legal time is often wasted due to manual work–inefficient processes cost businesses 20-30% in revenue annually.

The need for a solution is reflected in the market too–over $1Bn in venture funding went to legal tech companies in 2021. Legal tech budgets are projected to grow by 3x in the next 4 years, with 50% of in-house legal work to be automated by 2024. A recent Gartner report found that “current legal workloads are unmanageable, and lawyers are exhausted. Intake and triage helps address these problems by allowing legal teams to control what work they do, and how they do it.”

AI-Driven Solutions. Streamline AI’s no-code platform enables companies to optimize processes across G&A business units. The intelligent intake platform maximizes efficiency around high-volume request workflows, while solving the legal-specific problems of confidentiality, data permission and control, and measurement–all without any engineering effort required. The platform’s AI learns in the background over time, improving processes and streamlining request intake according to best practices and business function–for example, non-technical teams have different needs than engineering and product.

Generic ticket solutions such as Jira aren’t designed to handle the specific nature of legal requests, and even risks compromising sensitive company information by failing to wall off certain information that should be protected under legal privilege. In comparison, Streamline AI delivers:

1. Confidentiality + permission control. All information shared between teams is subject to legal privilege. Whereas Jira leaves this information exposed, Streamline has an easy way to maintain privilege, with a “For legal eyes only” notes section.

2. Accurate, actionable data. Measurement is key to improving productivity and retention. The platform’s metrics are made for legal, i.e. types of SLAs, how long it takes for approval on average, etc.

3. Zero-code UI. Changes don’t require an engineering team, and the UI was built by those who have experienced the problem firsthand.

Streamline AI’s customers–which include Branch Metrics and VSCO– range from venture-backed technology startups to a publicly-traded fintech company and an $8.7B computer peripherals company. Most businesses have identified teams outside of legal who are using the product to streamline workflows across people operations, recruiting leadership, department heads, and more.

“We knew from the minute we met Kathy and the team that they were the ones to solve this massive problem which exists at every company. They have incredible insight from their time at DoorDash, Google, and Citrix,” said Steven Rosenblatt, co-founder and general partner at Oceans Ventures. “Legal teams are critical to company speed and success. Streamline AI will dramatically increase productivity and retention for legal teams, and will solve the friction that exists between legal and other business functions.”

Streamline AI came from Zhu’s 10+ years of experience as a commercial lawyer, most recently building DoorDash’s commercial legal and legal operations functions from the ground up. She witnessed the “legal black box” firsthand, and knew it could be solved with the right technology. Kathy’s co-founder, Julian Wimbush, an ex-Google product lead and AI expert, experienced this problem from the business side for years. The founding team share a fundamental belief that solving the intake problem, automating workflows, and generating visibility into what’s being worked on will lead legal teams to be exponentially happier and more productive.

To learn more or to request a demo, please visit www.streamline.ai.

About Streamline AI

Streamline AI is the only intelligent intake platform for in-house legal teams. Founded in San Francisco in 2022, the AI-powered, no-code intake platform delivers visibility and metrics across G&A business units, starting with legal teams. A female-led company, the co-founding team consists of CEO Kathy Zhu and CTO Julian Wimbush. For more information, visit www.streamline.ai and follow on LinkedIn.

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Lauren Graffort

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BuzzKat, Inc. for Streamline AI

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