Meet Tunji Williams, co-founder and CEO of dealWIP. The company launched on June 15, 2017, and their product is scheduled to launch on April 30, 2018. Williams, 28, is based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a citizen of the United States of America and Nigeria. Williams and his co-founder and Head of Product, Alex Nordholm, presented dealWIP at the CodeX Meeting on Jan. 25, 2018, regarding the value of global standardization of substance and process in the context of legal service delivery.

 

SOCIAL STUDIES
Website: https://www.dealwip.co/
Twitter (Tunji): Tunij’s Twitter
Twitter (dealWIP): dealWIP Twitter
Facebook: dealWIP Facebook Page
Linkedin (Tunji): Tunji’s Linkedin
Linkedin (dealWIP): dealWIP Linkedin

Education: New York University, B.A. (2011). University of Virginia School of Law (2014). I am admitted to practice in Maryland. My practice focused almost entirely on mergers and acquisitions, securities, and general corporate matters.

Past significant jobs: Hogan Lovells U.S., Associate Attorney, 2014-2015. FiscalNote, Business Development Strategist, 2015. Miles & Stockbridge, Associate Attorney, 2016-2017.

Is this your first start-up? No: At FiscalNote, I was employee #31 and the first employee responsible for marketing the company’s government relationship management platform to law firms of all sizes across the U.S.

How did you come up with the name? The name is a product of my imagination. “WIP” was originally intended to be an acronym for the term “Workflow Integration Platform.” It has since come to also stand for “Work in Progress.” Like any deal, the evolution of our name is fluid.

What problem does dealWIP solve? It’s no secret that law firm’s clients are demanding lower costs and greater value. The dealWIP product is a robust, cloud-based contracting platform. It is a collection of intuitive and integrated tools, designed to make it easier and less expensive to manage and close corporate legal transactions. Our customers include transactional attorneys based at law firms or corporate legal departments. We also help business development or operations professionals whose workflow includes the drafting, negotiation and management of contracts

What inspired you to pursue dealWIP? We began dealWIP to solve an acute problem we were experiencing in our own professional lives: Corporate legal transactions are complex and inefficient. Lawyers and their clients use outdated, clunky and disconnected desktop applications to get legal transactions closed. As corporate lawyers we grew tired of putting up with this situation, and wanted to create a way to better serve our clients and make work and life easier and more efficient for our colleagues. We dreamed of a fully-integrated, cloud-based, end-to-end contract workflow platform for attorneys and their clients, and we set out to build it.

Is dealWIP on the market? We plan to launch the product (also named dealWIP) on April 30th, 2018. We will initially offer it to attorneys at small and solo law firms ($50/per user/per month) and business development professionals at early-stage startup companies ($25/per user/per month). As we progress, with enhanced functionality, we plan to charge  attorneys at larger law firms ($150/per user/per month) and in-house attorneys at enterprise businesses ($50/per user/per month).

Do you have any patents? We have not yet registered any patents.

 

Have you raised money?  Yes, just under $400,000 in angel financing from friends, family, former colleagues and former business executives.

 

 

 

What is your biggest challenge re: the start-up? The hardest part of building and sustaining a successful startup is maintaining a commintment to relentless and aggressive daily execution. That means breaking down grand objectives into discrete and manageable hourly tasks, and putting one foot in front of the other each day, until it all gets done. There’s no magic, just hard work.

What do you need right now? In six months? In a year? Right now, we need uncompromised focus on establishing ironclad product-market fit with the guidance of our earliest adopters and champions. Six months: we will need additional financial resources and world-class teammates to power our anticipated hyper-growth expansion. One year: as we navigate our commercial options and inevitable obstacles, we will need relentless commitment to our vision of a cloud- based and tech-enabled legal service delivery model powered by dealWIP.

What have you learned that you wish you knew five years ago? Listen way more than you speak.

 

What book changed your life? “Behind the Cloud,” by Marc Benioff. It is the master playbook for any technology company looking to compete effectively in the software-as-a-service landscape.

 

Advice do for other entrepreneurs? Trust your gut and your team, and maintain a bias for action.

Who most influenced you and how? President Barack Obama for me is the gold standard of excellence. I strive, in many ways, to emulate his example.

Your most important mentors? My fifth grade teacher, the late Bonita Boyce. She made me believe that I could be anything in the world that I wanted to be. She saw greatness in me before I saw it in myself.

What are you afraid of? Wasting time and not pushing myself and those around me to seize every opportunity within reach.

What are you most proud of? My capacity to demonstrate genuine empathy for others and my resilience under extreme pressure. 

What would be your dream career if you were not a lawyer and entrepreneur? I would be a community organizer.

What does your workspace look like? Clean and bare. I don’t need much more than my MacBook, my cell phone and my power chords.

Favorite musician:  Sean “Jay-Z” Carter, because his music speaks to my heart and reflects a wisdom and global perspective that transcends his own lived experience. I find him to be an awe-inspiring and enigmatic artist.

 

Favorite food: Fried rice.

What’s your guilty pleasure? Cinnamon rolls and “Boardwalk Empire”.

 

 

Favorite quote:  “In everything, then, do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12)

What’s your mantra? Just do it.

Who would you want sitting next to you if you got stuck for three hours on the tarmac in a 737? Masayoshi Son.  I admire him and the magnificent vision that he has manifested at SoftBank. I am impressed that he is a self-made entrepreneur, and that he began his career as an inventor.

Photo courtesy of Tunji Williams. Photographer: Arthur Karell.
dW image courtesy of  dealwip.com
Cover and other images: Clipart.com.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist. She is a member of the California bar. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay.