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Title: Gaurav Oberoi, CEO and Co-Founder of Lexion: $35 Million Raised to Build an AI-Powered Contract Management Platform

Opening Paragraph: Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Gaurav Oberoi, CEO and co-founder of Lexion, an AI-powered contract management platform that has raised $35 million in funding.

  • Gaurav’s background is in engineering and product, having studied computer science and worked at Amazon early in his career before starting his first of four companies.
  • Lexion helps companies streamline the contract process, providing intake tools, sophisticated no-code automations, an AI-powered repository, and generative AI capabilities to assist with contract review and redlining.
  • The idea for Lexion originated from Gaurav’s time at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where advancements in natural language processing showed promise for automating document understanding.
  • Lexion has seen strong traction, with threefold revenue growth last year, high customer retention and engagement, and a recent $20 million Series B raise in a challenging funding environment.
  • To build pipeline, Lexion has focused on educating the legal community through the expertise of its team members like Chief Legal Officer Jessica Nguyen.
  • Gaurav envisions Lexion becoming a comprehensive workflow operations platform, expanding beyond legal to empower finance, IT, sales ops, procurement, and other back-office teams.

Actionable
Takeaways

Look for Applications of Emerging Technologies:

Gaurav's journey highlights the power of identifying business applications for cutting-edge research. By connecting advancements in natural language processing to the challenges of contract management, he found a compelling opportunity. Founders should stay attuned to emerging technologies and actively explore how they might solve real-world problems, even in seemingly unrelated domains.

Validate with Rigorous Customer Experiments:

Lexion's early traction was accelerated by a rigorous validation experiment with Wilson Sonsini's chief innovation officer. By rapidly training models and demonstrating value, the team earned both a commercial relationship and an investment. When exploring applications for new technologies, founders should design experiments that simulate real customer use cases and create objective value.

Hire Domain Experts to Boost Credibility:

Recognizing the importance of legal expertise, Lexion strategically hired lawyers across functions like customer success, sales, and marketing. This infusion of domain knowledge not only informed product development but also enabled the team to credibly educate and evangelize to their core audience. Founders serving specialized industries should consider how domain experts can lend valuable insight and authority.

Focus on Engagement and Adoption, Not Just Sales:

Gaurav takes pride in Lexion's high customer retention and usage metrics, seeing them as a testament to the platform's stickiness and impact. Rather than solely chasing new sales, the team has prioritized delivering continuous value that makes Lexion an indispensable daily tool. Founders should orient their efforts around driving lasting engagement and adoption, not just initial deals.

Pursue Adjacent Expansion Opportunities:

With a strong foothold in legal, Gaurav sees an opportunity for Lexion to become a workflow operations platform for a wide range of back-office functions. By identifying pain points and inefficiencies in adjacent departments like finance and procurement, the company can leverage its existing capabilities to expand its value proposition. Founders should continually explore how their solutions can naturally extend to related domains.