EPISODE 11 | Andy Wishart, Chief Product Officer Agiloft

In this episode, Tyson Ballard speaks to Andy Wishart, the Chief Product Officer at Agiloft. Andy shares his career journey, insights into legal tech, and entrepreneurship. He introduces himself as the head of product management at Agiloft and shares his extensive experience in the legal tech industry, including roles at Thomson Reuters and as the co-founder of Contract Express.

Agiloft is a leading Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software provider, offering robust solutions for contract management, workflow automation, and compliance.

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Tyson Ballard: Excellent. So welcome, Andy, to another edition of the Legal Dispatch. I know we’ve tried to do this podcast a couple of times in a few different disguises or a few different guises, but we’re happy we could have the conversation today. Looks like it’s quite sunny in London where you are. Is that an illusion?

Andy Wishart: I think it is an illusion. So, there are quite a lot of windows in this room but it’s a little bit grey and overcast in London today, but warmer, you know, it’s not too cold. So, it’s all good.

Tyson Ballard: Excellent. Excellent. Well, welcome. Maybe we could just start and do a little introduction to yourself. So, tell us, a little bit about Andy and who you work for. It’d be great to just touch a little bit on kind of your previous roles as well. That’d be great because I know they’re interesting.

Andy Wishart: Sounds good. Firstly, thanks for inviting me along to the podcast, Tyson. It’s great to finally like you say, get this in the calendar. Yep, so I’m Andy Wishart, I run product management for a CLM company called Agiloft. We’re one of the leading CLM vendors within the space, so enterprise end-to-end CLM. I’ve been in the contract space for something close to 25 years now. So, before Agiloft, I was at Thomson Reuters for a few years, leading product management for them, for their contracting solutions. Prior to that, I was co-founder and CTO of Contract Express, which we ran for well over a decade before it was acquired by Thomson Reuters back in 2015. So, being in legal tech for pretty much all my career and almost all that career focused on contracting.

Tyson Ballard: Excellent, excellent. So yeah, I know we’re going to dive a lot, especially into the early days of Contract Express. Because I’m quite intrigued to hear all the war stories and the podcast is typically about founders’ tips for success or not. I know you are very successful. But just maybe to kick us off, what does a day in the life of Andy look like today, in your current role?

Andy Wishart: Yeah, it’s a long day. Product management is tough, right? You’re sort of sitting within the organization, collaborating sort of cross-functionally with almost every other department. The most collaboration we do is typically with our engineering team as we’re trying to work through ideas and solutions that we’re building. So, lots of calls. We’re a globally distributed team, spanning from the Pacific coast all the way through to we have engineers and data scientists in New Zealand.

So, long days. Lots of calls, and lots of discussions about how we move things forward, but yeah, it’s an exciting role and it’s an exciting organization to be part of as well. We spend a lot of time sort of planning through what are some of the features that we’re going to be building out over the next release cycle. Yeah, I’m planning as well, working with our product marketing team on our messaging for a new feature. Maybe meeting with journalists and analysts to talk about new product launches as well. And probably more than all that external stuff is meeting with customers. Yeah, so that might be through something formal like a product discovery session or design session with customers or, just helping our teams, helping a customer through a particular issue. So, yeah, it’s an incredibly varied role, right, within the product. We’re seen as the experts of the product, so we get wheeled out into many discussions externally as well.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, I’m always intrigued in kind of that role because you’re always almost seen as this kind of messiah type role in terms of, you always must constantly look so far ahead into the future because obviously, releases kind of take some time to put into kind of effect. But then also like you’re maintaining the existing. So, building and running is quite an interesting role. I mean tell us like from the twinkle of your eye when you have an idea and when it comes through to the product getting rolled out, how much does it change over that time

and does it always stay true to that the original problem was solved, how does that work?

Andy Wishart: Well, I think, you know, ideas can come from everywhere. There will be ideas coming from lots of people within the organization who are using the product every day. They might come from our partners, right? Our partners are helping our customers get a quick return on their investment in CLM. So, ideas can come from everywhere. They can come from customers as well, and they also come from our product managers within the team. But then it’s important to validate those ideas and go through a design process to ensure that it’s feasible to build such a thing, to sort of validate that it’s solving a real problem. Getting a sense of what value there is in solving that problem may have implications for how you package it, how you price it, how you commercialize it, go to market. So, there’s a ton of validation, a ton of research that needs to be done to see an idea potentially move through the pipeline before we get into the actual work of building something. Maybe prototyping something first, getting that into the hands of potential users to get feedback and doing it iteratively.

Tyson Ballard: It’s fascinating. It’s fascinating. I mean, I know there’s a lot of buzz about Agiloft now and it does seem like there’s some good momentum with the tool and we’re getting lots of great feedback. So, you’re doing a great job and you’re on the right path.

Andy Wishart: Yeah, and I think that is way bigger than the pixels that the product team and the engineering team are sort of painting on the screen and the features, tools and capabilities. I think Agiloft is highly regarded as an organization. And I think a big part of that is we recognize and understand that contracting is a largely human activity. There are humans in every stage of the process when contracting. There are humans involved in the buy-in and the implementation. We focus on that humanity. We’re focused on getting things done for our customers, focused on their success, and then leaving them in a sort of self-sufficient so that they can continue to build and drive value from the platform over time. So, I think our focus on really good tech, like good data-driven, data-first CLM technology is a really important part. But also sort of focusing on the human side of contracting, I think sets us apart as well.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, yeah. I’m always interested in busy people, what their habits are especially usually waking up in the morning or something like that. I know you’re busy, right? So, you’re going across kind of multiple time zones, multiple teams, etc. What are your morning habits and rituals, and do you do the same thing every time? Are you a creature of habit or you’re a creature of chaos? Like how does that work for you? What are the things that you do to manage the stress as well?

Andy Wishart: Well, I think, it’s a varied role, and every day is genuinely different, so as much as I would love to be pretty regimented and do things in a very structured way, I’m kind of like that. I’ve got to be flexible and being flexible in this type of role means you know if you can grab an hour slot here and there. That’s when I’m going to take the dog for a walk, or I’ve got maybe a later start in the day and shift in my day, I’ll try and do something fun in the morning. I play a fair amount of tennis and I’m really lucky that I’ve got tennis clubs very close to the house. So, I love to try and get a couple of matches of tennis in during the week and first thing in the morning.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, nice. So, where do you do your best thinking? Do you think walking the dog or playing tennis? Tennis is probably a little bit different, right? Yeah. In terms of hitting a ball.

Andy Wishart: Yeah, definitely on the walks in the morning. I live in London, but we’re close to one of the commons here in South London. So, taking a walk with the dog in the morning is often a really good time to sort of reflect and plan and think about the day, and the week ahead. Yeah, so that’s probably my most inspiring time. Tennis is less, I’m just huffing and puffing so I can’t think anything much when I’m playing tennis. But yeah, on the dog walk. That’s a chill time.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. I mean, maybe changing it up a little bit, like if you were asked to do a TED talk on a topic that is not your main area of expertise what would you do a talk on and why?

Andy Wishart: Oh, that is really tough. Because I don’t know if I know anything other than contract management, document automation and legal tech. Well maybe, thinking about this sort of, I was talking about the sort of humanity of CLM. I’ve got a real interest in psychology, and I graduated back in the late 90s in psychology and artificial intelligence, which is a bizarre sort of combined degree particularly way back then as well. Yeah. And half of that was about trying to build intelligent systems. Machine learning was sort of really in its infancy then. So, there were a lot of rules-based sort of solutions and expert systems. But then the psychology half of my undergraduate degree, which was focused on things like cognitive science, linguistics, memory and vision. I find that incredibly fascinating. So, I think somewhere at the intersection between the history of AI and Psychology. That sounds fancy like I know a ton about that, which I probably don’t, but I think something around cognitive science and vision and its relation to technology. Alternatively, I’m very efficient at doing laundry, which is another passion of mine. So maybe, like, how to efficiently do a whole family’s laundry in the least amount of time possible. Those would be the two potential TED Talks, I think.

Tyson Ballard: It’s so bizarre you say that because I’ve just finished doing a leadership course with some interesting and very different people from different backgrounds. And one was the coach of Milwaukee Bucks, the NBA team.

Andy Wishart: Wow.

Tyson Ballard: And we’re talking about the things that you do, that you love and enjoy that are quite mundane and seem trivial to other people. For him, I was asking when you won the NBA, what did you do? And he said, I just went and mowed my lawn. The therapeutic thing of mowing a lawn, which I could have probably said the same thing for doing the laundry. For making, something dirty clean, separating the colours, all that kind of stuff. It’s quite a switch-off kind of topic, but still practical. And out of that, I’ve discovered that there’s almost a podcast on everything. There is a podcast on mowing your lawn, I’m sure there’s a podcast on doing your laundry. I’m sure there is. So maybe you should look at it and see if there’s anything, maybe you could guest on one of those podcasts.

Andy Wishart: I would have to keep that secret because if my family and my kids found out that I was listening to podcasts on laundry, they would just roast me even more for being completely and utterly mad. So yeah, I’ll have to secretly check that one out.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, exactly. I’m always intrigued about the moment that you decide to become a founder or an entrepreneur, where you dive off the cliff, essentially. Because it’s scary and it’s risky and you don’t know if you’re going to have dinner on the table. Can you tell us about that conversation, tell us the story about the time and what pushed you over the edge to do this and what was the conversation you had either with yourself or your partner and said, You know what I’m going to do it. Tell us a story about that. I guess it’s related to Contract Express, right?

Andy Wishart: Yeah, Contract Express was unusual and it’s quite nuanced. There wasn’t that sort of moment of yes, I’m doing this thing. Because the origins of Contract Express were quite interesting. There was and still is, an AI company in the UK called Logic Programming Associates (LPA) and they were a client. I’m going back to the sort of late ’90s, and early 2000s. They were a client of a tech-focused law firm in London called Tarlow Lyons, which then became Blake Morgan. I think they are Blake Morgan now. The AI company was a client, they were being advised by the law firm. And the AI company had been doing some research on the creation of documents. So, a partner in the law firm, John Mawhood, a smart guy, super guy, started to work with the AI company to say, ‘Well, isn’t there an opportunity here to apply this to legal documents?’ So, the law firm put in some seed funding, and brought in a consultant who was evaluating whether there was value here and whether there was an opportunity. That consultant agreed that there was, and in fact, the consultant joined as chairman and that guy was Henry Steen. So back at that time, there was a sort of formation of the idea of applying this technology, sort of rules-driven AI. It was effectively a rules-driven AI expert system to document automation. They had this structure in place and with funding from the law firm and the consultant, they were looking for the team to help sort of build it and drive it forward. I was doing some research and Teaching at Edinburgh University in AI and psychology, and I think that background in AI was something that they were interested in. They invited me to come down and have a discussion with them. And I knew nothing about legal. I knew nothing about legal technology, although legal technology was in its infancy back then. I saw something in this tech, the idea, and the passion of the two or three people around it. I was like I’d love to be a part of this and joined. The rest of this is history. And it was a slow organic build, there was that seed funding in place, but we then sort of grew it, bootstrapped it in a very organic way over several years. We were probably way ahead of our time in terms of the market. Back at that point, there were only certain law firms within the market that were ready for that type of investment in technology. You know, like, crossing the chasm, so to speak, took a long time for Contract Express.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, yeah. Did you have a willing client to be experimented on or did you have to pound the pavement and knock down those doors?

Andy Wishart: No, like early on within the first 12 months, I think we had landed Linklaters as our first customer and we had a proof of concept running with Clifford Chance at the same time, I think, Freshfields. The strategy was very much, let’s go after the magic circle. If we can prove it there then the rest of the market would follow. And it was a bold strategy. Our chairman, Henry Steen, was like this is the head buffalo strategy. We’re going at the top of the pyramid. Let’s prove it out there. And the rest of the market will follow. So, we were fortunate to get success in a short period. We had a prototype, we sort of built that out, we sold it, and we were able to do that deal with Linklaters in probably less than 12 months. It was a hard 12 months, but we got there, and we learned a ton along that process as well.

Tyson Ballard: I mean there’s goods and there’s pluses and minuses to being way before your time in terms of there’s no competition, you’re breaking new ground, the markets not saturated, etc. What would be your advice to a founder who is starting in today’s market, especially in the contract world, for example, there are always going to be new problems to solve, right? But what would be your advice to a new founder that is starting today? Thinking back to where you guys were was it 20, 22, 23 years ago? Yeah.

Andy Wishart: So, just going back to 22, 23 years ago, there was an incumbent in the market, document automation had been around for 10 years before that. It originated around the same time as word processing did, so HotDocs were in the market. They were pretty well known. It wasn’t completely plain sailing coming into a fresh market and we were the only ones. I think my advice today, like the barriers to entry to get into legal tech, is pretty low. There is capital out there that is relatively easy to get to. I think advances in AI and generative AI provide a set of toolkits to be able to build something interesting within the contract space. The challenge is how do you bring something unique? How do you bring a unique story, a unique set of capabilities that is differentiated over the masses of tools? Like, just think of the masses of tools that are within the overall contract technology space now. There are hundreds. So you’ve got to be able to stand out. I think marketing is really important, how you position yourself that you’ve got a differentiated story, a differentiated capability. That might not necessarily be something that has never been done before, but you’re bringing a fresh approach to it, a better approach to that particular problem that may have been solved before, but you’re doing it in a uniquely different way. And you’re getting traction, you’re getting user adoption, you’re getting feedback, you’re getting recommendations, you’re getting reviews of those capabilities that can stand up. It’s tough. But there’s money. There’s still a lot of opportunity if you look broadly across geographies like North America and the UK, Ireland, and Europe, the vast majority of organizations don’t have contracting solutions, so there is still opportunity. There is a lot of opportunity there.

I think a tough part for any founder, and we found this even back with Contract Express, particularly within the CLM space, Contract Express was good at self-service generation creation of documents. And if you’re a startup coming into the space, you’re probably going to have a laser-like focus on a particular problem. The challenge, of course, is that most buyers, most organizations now, are looking for end-to-end. They’re looking for full-stack solutions that take the contracts from initiation through to execution and management and optimise your process. So, I think it’s tough to come in with a point solution. I think coming in with a point solution does require you to establish the partnerships that you might need to fit into this broader ecosystem to have success.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, to be honest, I’d echo that observation. For some of the point solutions that we’ve been in chats with the partner over the last 12 to 18 months, or 24 months, it’s much harder to sell a point solution. People come to us typically with a big problem to solve or they have nothing that I want to either replace a contracting or a matter management tool or a front door or automation or something like that.

It’s very rarely that I need a pop-up to give me some prompts on a playbook or something like that. So, it’s more enterprise-worthy end-to-end solutions that we see getting traction in the marketplace and these big projects to standardize that language across organizations outside of legal. And let’s face it, legal is one step in the process typically of either doing a deal or solving an issue. And it’s important that those tools also talk to other parts of the business. Yeah, I agree.

Andy Wishart: Well, it’s not impossible for point solutions to be successful. There are loads of examples within the legal tech community and, even within the contracting solutions. I think the approach, though, there has to be a recognition that you’re not there to solve all of the problems. So, you need to work with the other tools. So, I think that means taking an API-first approach so it could be easily integrated and maybe even building experiences within Microsoft Word because that’s a common platform that users are going to be using throughout contracting.

Now, there’s a bucket of people who believe that Word is not the right venue for negotiating and contracting and that there is a better approach, a proprietary approach within some CLM tools. I don’t believe that. I think Word is the right environment for negotiation and drafting. So, if Point Solutions are bringing something new to the table, figuring out how they’re going to sit within Microsoft Word to mingle with other solutions that are inside Microsoft Word, including things like Microsoft’s own 365 Copilot. So, being able to have a solution that integrates into the workflow in the tools that they’re using at a particular point in the workflow, I think is important.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Maybe changing it up a little bit. So, if you hear the word or if you think of the word successful, who’s the first person that comes to your mind and why?

Andy Wishart: Oh, well, alright, two people, and one, because this is a SYKE podcast, and I’m a good friend with Alistair, I’m going to say the first-person Alistair Maiden, because we go back a long way. We provided ASDA with Contract Express, and he built a fantastic solution, sort of driving a real significant change within the organization using CLM and contracting solutions there. And to see the success of SYKE after he’d left ASDA and to see the growth of SYKE, it’s been fantastic. So, Alistair, he’s going to be my number one. Now, this is going to make him sound big. He’s going to be very big-headed when I say my second one is Satya Nadella. I don’t know what Alistair’s response to that will be. But what Nadella has done at Microsoft, over his role as CEO is amazing, right? They were behind AWS on the cloud. They were probably a little bit behind Google in terms of AI capabilities, what he’s achieved over that period to drive the sort of explosion of Azure. From a product perspective, I love to see the evolution of Microsoft 365 and Teams coming in at the right point in time as everyone. I didn’t know the pandemic was coming, but just the timing of Microsoft 365 and cloud adoption and teams and the growth of Teams over that period is spectacular. And then even up to the current day, their strategy around open AI and open AI services within Azure is impressive. As a technologist, I’ve always been fascinated and impressed by that.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, it does seem to me like if you were to hedge a bet, Microsoft may win the race. Wouldn’t you say? They’ve got big pockets to invest in their product, obviously. It’s still probably the most used tool across any organisation. I think it’s it seems to me that they’re investing in the right things, the product that is improving constantly, which is great. So, credit to him. I won’t talk about Alistair because I don’t want him to get an even bigger head than you’ve just said. But yeah, that’s great, I mean 100 per cent he’s very dear to my heart so it’s amazing that you mentioned him because he would be someone that I would say too. It’s been a great journey at SYKE and we’re looking forward to the next one too.

Andy Wishart: Yeah big, exciting times ahead for the organization and Consilio as well, yeah.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, yeah, exactly. What about thinking of failures or making mistakes? Well, how has a failure or, apparent failure set you up for later success? Did you have a favourite failure of yours?

Andy Wishart: There have been several. I think that just the nature of the product management role is that there are going to be certain things that are not going to work out. And, you know it’s important to recognize that quickly and retrench and figure out an alternative path forward. So, there are lots of examples of where things have not worked out right for me, professionally. Do I have a favourite? I’m not so sure, I think there are examples where I’ve maybe had in my mind that this product or feature, capability is like really good, important and it’s going to be game-changing. And like, I truly believe that. And then the next step is I’ve got to go out and validate that with research before we decide that’s the thing. With the research, we’ve got to do that. But I think when you get focused on a particular idea, and you’ve got this conviction that is going to be a game changer, I do worry that the product manager could potentially, be taken bias into that research and shape the research in a way that you’re going to get the result that you’re looking for. And I think there have maybe been occasions where that may have happened and I think the learning from that experience is to just try and detach from it, be more objective, don’t sort of constrain the research and the discovery so that you’re getting the answer that you’re looking for because it is really important to validate the research. To make sure that there is a problem to solve, validate that the solution is the right approach to solving that problem. So, I think there are lots of examples in my past of that. Other, not so much failures, but, potentially missed opportunities I think about going back to the early days of Contract Express, when Contract Express was beginning to get a pretty decent foothold, especially here in the UK within the top 100 or top 50 law firms. And HighQ was doing something similar in collaboration. So early days, I remember meeting with Stuart and Ajay and some of the other team, Stuart Barr and Ajay Patel at HighQ. And we were exploring how Contract Express and HighQ can come together. And we didn’t manage to make that work at that time. And that was probably going back maybe 10 years before their acquisition from Thomson Reuters. But I always had this admiration of HighQ as an organization and as a product as well. I regret that we weren’t able to make those things come together in some form back then. I think I was probably too stuck in my thoughts about the pricing and how it would work. So, maybe some regrets there. Ironically, we both end up at Thomson Reuters, and both get integrated eventually. But there may be moments in the past where I thought with the benefit of hindsight, there have been, missed opportunities for driving more value within the legal tech ecosystem.

Tyson Ballard: At what point during Contract Express did you decide to sell it, essentially?

Andy Wishart: Well, I think we were organically grown with the exception of seed funding right at the beginning. And I think there were several reasons. We’d shown significant growth over a period, particularly the last three years before the acquisition by Thomson Reuters, so things were going well. We felt that in order to take it to the next level, it needed further investment. We needed to accelerate product development. We needed to get a wider reach from a marketing, a go-to-market perspective. There were some of the realities of the shareholders and the co-founders wanting to find a potential exit. So, the timing felt right for everyone back in 2015. We set a plan. We were like okay let’s work on this multi-year plan to this point. We pretty much executed it for the month. I think we’d originally set September of 2015; we were working up to that date and we exited to TR in October. So, yeah, we had a plan and executed on that.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, nice, nice. I was interested to know what is that tipping point where you realise that you want to take it to that next level. You know, is it geography? Is it a 15 million revenue or is it a number, or is it more organic in terms of people start knocking on your door? But yeah, that’s interesting that it was kind of all planned out essentially. What advice would you give to your younger self, like Andy’s leaving university, and embarking on his career? I don’t want to say you’re in the twilight of your career now, but yeah.

Andy Wishart: I am.

Tyson Ballard: But if you say it, I’ll let you. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Andy Wishart: Yeah, that’s tough. I worked really hard, in the early days, particularly the early days of Contract Express. What would be my advice? Make sure you have a lot of fun along the way as well. I think that’s really important. I think there’ll probably be moments in my career where I’ve maybe taken it too seriously. So, I think it’s important to get a balance, make sure that you’ve got a balance between work and your interests outside so that you don’t get to this stage in your career and the only topic that you could talk to on a TED talk is laundry. So, I think having an interest outside of your passion, which is tough, because when you are really passionate about something it is all-consuming. I think my advice to my younger self would be to have a broader set of interests, and broader passions outside of your core thing and have more fun and maybe more holidays as well.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, I know, like it’s a, it’s a very familiar story in terms of most founders in terms of that first 10 years, like, really poor balance in terms of family life. Being present, not many holidays, not much pay to be honest but it’s successful in the end. Is that the price you need to pay, for that success? I’ve spoken to nearly 15, or 16 founders now of LegalTech and they’re all the major ones, and they all say the same thing. So, it’s not like, probably for not want of trying, I imagine to have a more balanced life. It’s almost like that’s what it takes to get the job done, would you say?

Andy Wishart: I think that’s a fair point. Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight having gone through that pain and those challenges to get to the point where we are in our careers. I think you’re probably right, but maybe just a little bit more fun.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, a little bit of skiing. Yeah, okay. Just to kind of wrap it up and thanks you’ve been a wonderful guest. I’ve enjoyed the chats and the insights. What about a theme song? Do you have a ‘Andy Wishart’ theme song? I feel like we probably should have ended up in some dodgy karaoke pubs, in and around London over the years, but you know, what would be your theme song?

Andy Wishart: I think it would depend on the context but if it was like a fun context, I’ll go probably with ‘I’m gonna be 500 miles’ by the Proclaimers. That would be my go-to song within a karaoke for a bit of fun, so yeah, Proclaimers.

Tyson Ballard: They are Scottish, right?

Andy Wishart: They are! In fact, they are from the Kingdom of Fife, where I grew up. They’re from a fabulously named place called Auchtermuchty. There are not that many non-Scots that can say Auchtermuchty, which is a very cool place. So yeah, they grew up relatively close to where I grew up in the Kingdom of Fife.

Tyson Ballard: Wow. Excellent. Alright, well, Andy, thank you so much. It’s been great to talk to you. Great insight and I’m sure people will take a lot away from that. So many, many thanks.

Andy Wishart: Oh, you bet, Tyson. Thanks for having me on. We, you know. We’ve had a great partnership with SYKE here at Agiloft and before that with Contract Express. So best of luck to everyone in the new Consilio world as well. Excited to see where things go next under Consilio. So, thanks for having me on, Tyson.

Tyson Ballard: Cheers, Andy.

Andy Wishart: See ya.

Tyson Ballard: Excellent, excellent. so yeah, I know we’re going to dive a lot, especially into the early days of Contract Express. Because I’m quite intrigued to hear all the war stories and the podcast is typically about founders’ tips for success or not. I know you are very successful. But just maybe to kick us off, what does a day in the life of Andy look like today, in your current role?