$100M Seed Valuation? Premonition Oversubscribes
Premonition, a Miami based start up just raised a seed round at a $100 Million valuation.
Nov 04, 2015, 02:00 ET
MIAMI, Nov. 4, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Premonition, a Miami based start up just raised a seed round at a $100 Million valuation. "The investor has been back several times asking to buy more shares, so I guess, technically, we oversubscribed it," says CEO, Guy Kurlandski. Is this a sign of an impending tech bubble? Premonition argues that it has a very different proposition from the social media, photo sharing apps that are garnering VC eyeballs. Premonition is an Artificial Intelligence system that mines Big Data to find out which Attorneys win before which Judges. The company claims it is "A very, very unfair advantage in Litigation."
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Premonition has developed proprietary data gathering technology to enable it to download and assimilate public records at scale. It claims to have the largest database of litigation in the world, furthermore, that is bigger than every major database combined. "We live in exponential times, where a competitor can come from nowhere with disruptive technology that can change the face of an industry overnight. Premonition is the only player in the $400Bn legal space that knows the actual performance of individual lawyers and firms. It's a frightening advantage. It was blindingly obvious, right from the start, that this was a Billion dollar company," says Nic Viljoen, an advisor to the company, who first met them at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Esprit.
Kurlandski and co-founder, Toby Unwin, the inventor of the system turned down investors right from the start. "Getting the valuation wasn't the hard part, it was finding someone flexible enough to only take a small piece. Many of my contacts have $20-50M minimum investments, so we couldn't accommodate them on this round. They're coming in later, even though they realize they may be paying 10x more." The pair finally accepted an investor who actually offered a valuation considerably lower than others because he was willing to only take 3%. Terms trumped price. "This will be a multi billion company, equity is very, very expensive money," Kurlandski explains.
The pair also turned down a major law firm who offered an eye watering price at the firm's inception, but demanded control of the system. "We had a number of heated discussions about it. I said, if the system was going to be restricted and watered down, I was out. It's more that just the money at stake here, it's hugely important to bring some transparency to the justice system," Unwin said. "It's not about raising money, it's about raising the right money," Kurlandski added.
"The Company has already created the World's largest legal database enabling the prediction of outcome of any lawsuit with a high degree of accuracy. This in itself is invaluable data," says CFO, Robert Pola. "Added to this the fact that the Company is now in high level talks with leaders within the Global Insurance industry, underwriters and insurance companies themselves, who when all said and done are in the risk assessment business, establishes the financial arena for this business. The initial valuation arising from the first round of funding is therefore well supported and in due course will result in this company achieving a multibillion dollar valuation," Pola added.
www.premonition.ai
SOURCE Premonition