We are excited to announce Movac Growth Fund 6’s first investment – LawVu.

Movac is leading the company’s Series A extension round via a NZ$15m investment. LawVu raised a Series A from Insight Partners (USA) and other investors in 2021, and sought a trusted local partner for their next round of investment.

Movac recently closed the $200m Growth Fund 6, targeting investment in Kiwi technology companies that have experienced teams, proven product market fit and a scalable business model. LawVu is an exceptional fit for this fund, and we are delighted to deploy our first cheque in one of New Zealand’s best-performing SaaS companies.

Who are LawVu

LawVu is a New Zealand-headquartered mid-market SaaS company that sells software servicing “matters”, “contracts”, “insights” and other capabilities to in-house legal teams (i.e. within corporates, not legal firms) primarily in the ANZ, UK and US markets. The LawVu platform creates a single source of truth, removing the need to bounce from system to system while facilitating workflow management, legal content creation, and – importantly – connects in-house legal teams to the wider business. 

The company was founded by Sam Kidd and Tim Boyne, looking to take advantage of the movement of corporate functions towards digital adoption (e.g. Finance > NetSuite, Workday > HR, HubSpot > Marketing, and LawVu > Legal). The in-house legal software category is at an early stage of development with no clear winners, making it a promising whitespace to grow in.

Movac is investing in the company’s continued global expansion and product development, including AI-powered features to optimise operations, enhance collaboration, and drive efficiency for in-house legal professionals.

Why LawVu

From a general perspective, we like vertical SaaS companies that become a system of record. Once customers are onboarded, the basic software (such as LawVu’s “matters” functionality) becomes a cornerstone part of business workflows and is hard to remove. Smart operators can then use a platform approach to leverage this into supporting functionality (like LawVu’s “contracts” / other modules), creating expansion opportunities within the existing customer base. It’s this compounding of new customer growth plus expansion within existing customers (alongside a sticky customer base) that makes SaaS investing particularly rewarding under the right circumstances.

What’s interesting about LawVu specifically is the scale of the opportunity and the team’s go-to-market execution in pursuing it. The in-house legal function is very early in its adoption of software and most of the companies’ customers represent whitespace, coming from Outlook and niche point solutions. New Zealand and the technology start-up ecosystem need more category winners (like the Xero’s) and not just category challengers to be truly successful, and LawVu has a real chance of becoming one. It’s uncommon to see a New Zealand company this early in a category pushing the boundaries of customer acquisition so successfully, and we’re excited to see where this leads.

We’re proving the Fund 6 thesis

LawVu fits our Growth Fund 6 investment thematic of the “5 M’s”: being “momentum”, “market”, “margin”, “moat” and “management”. The company has strong revenue at the time of investment, excellent year-on-year growth, has a SaaS-level gross margin, creates a strong moat being a system of record and has a top-tier management team already in place.

We also think this shows Movac’s place as a preferred investor in the New Zealand market. The company didn’t run a formal process for this round, rather they came to us off the back of several quality conversations and our experience in growing vertical-SaaS from New Zealand, like Vend, Unleashed and Timely.

Thanks to the LawVu (and Movac) team

Working with Sam, Matt and Patrick from the LawVu team made this process a breeze. It’s a sign of the team’s capability and maturity the ease with which they tackled our investment and due diligence processes. With a surprise-averse institutional investor base and resulting high standards for due diligence, we run a comprehensive process.

I’m also proud to highlight we are building up some great capability within the wider Movac investment team and I must thank them for supporting me in driving this deal to a close.

Movac is delighted to join Sam and the LawVu team as they continue to superpower in-house legal teams across the world