May 7, 2020
I nearly screamed at my lawyer…
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Years ago, I was finishing up a real estate deal when my
lawyer told me that I had to notarize a
document.
No signature, no deal.
But that signature had to be from a notary, someone that’s earned
the authority of the state to approve that I actually was who I
said I was.
It’s an archaic process but it’s
necessary to fight off fraud.
The problem was that I travel. A lot. I was on the move and it
couldn’t wait until I was back home.
So I had to hunt down an approved notary in a city I barely knew,
figure out when he was free, and meet him at a convenience
store.
Just to prove that my ID was actually mine.
I remember thinking, “Surely someone can streamline this
process…”
Well, someone has.
Patrick Kinsel is the founder and CEO of Notarize, the first approved
digital notary service.
Instead of shady convenience store appointments, Notarize can
connect you with an official notary straight from your laptop in an
average of 30 seconds.
The story of Notarize is an amazing journey, and Patrick shared it
all with me on the latest episode of Escape Velocity right
here.
Want a lesson is perseverance?
Notarize’s biggest problem… was that their technology wasn’t legal
to begin with.
So Patrick’s company raised $42 million in capital, and spent over
$10 million of that just to lobby for laws to change so that
digital notarization could exist.
Imagine starting a
SaaS that literally needed new
laws before it was legal…
It’s a great interview, and you’ll hear from Patrick about:
- How they managed to change 22 state laws
- Buying domain names for $42k
- Building a product roadmap in reverse
- How Notarize solved the new problems they were creating
- Rewriting history books
In Patrick’s own words, they wanted to be the first company that
made it possible for you to buy a house on the internet.
And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Stop by the episode, hear the story for
yourself, and drop me a comment to let me know what amazed you
the most.
--
Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown
has people and teaches startup founders like you how to
scale. He previously created, raised venture funding
for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and
Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter @danmartell for tweets
that are actually awesome.
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