For the 68th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Pat Kinsel, Founder and CEO at Notarize.
You know, some of the most successful tech companies have triumphed not only because they have a great technical solution, but also because they had to totally disrupt an antiqued industry. I’m referring to really hard things like changing laws or regulations. Think of what companies like Airbnb and Uber went through in their earlier days.
Notarize, which has raised $31M in funding, has been in a similar situation, where they are taking the centuries-old process of notarizing documents into the modern, digital era by allowing any person or business to get their documents legally notarized online. It is a massive market opportunity, as over 1 billion documents are notarized every year.
Pat Kinsel is a serial entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. His prior company Spindle was acquired by Twitter, and after the acquisition, he joined Polaris Partners as an investor where he has led rounds of funding in companies like Drizly and Lob.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like:
- Pat’s background growing up on the West Coast and why he moved East.
- His experience working at Microsoft’s FUSE Labs in Cambridge and how that experience set the stage for his next company.
- How Spindle raised capital from top investors on both coasts for their social discovery app and the details behind the acquisition.
- His experience joining Polaris as an EIR and eventually becoming an investor.
- The story of a critical mistake that led him down the path of exploring the world of notaries and ultimately starting a company to disrupt this industry.
- Advice for entrepreneurs looking to raise capital.
- Practical advice for purchasing domain names.
- Plus, a lot more.
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Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.