How to start a company with your best friend, Olga Beck-Friis, Co-Founder & CEO of PocketLaw

How To Start Up by FF&M

In this episode I’m joined by Olga Beck-Friis, Co-Founder and CEO of PocketLaw, a Swedish startup now launching in the UK to enable SMEs to take care of their own legal matters.

Having co-founded PocketLaw with her oldest childhood friend, Kira Unger (CEO), Olga explains how she and Kira separate work from their personal friendship and how they manage this dynamic within a business environment. Olga also offers her insights into improving gender diversity within startups alongside her thoughts on the future digitisation and automation of professional services.

PocketLaw provides small businesses with contract automation and management, access to usually-expensive legal documentation, and on-demand consultation with real-life lawyers.

Olga’s advice:

• Take care to communicate; always be transparent about how you feel
• Listen carefully to each other and be willing to change your mind
• When looking for a partner, look for someone with similar values and ambitions for the company, but with different skill sets / experiences / enthusiasms, so that you will complement each other
• Remember, sharing the pressure relieves it
• As for gender diversity, go for the best candidate but concentrate your search in the right places
• You don’t need to define yourself as a business leader by gender
• When starting out, take the business seriously; follow the same protocols as large companies and be just as professional and organised
• A new company is vulnerable; don’t underestimate its equity, and only offer it to full-time employees or to cash investors
• Try not to worry too much; it will take time to build the company, so be kind to yourself

If you’d like to contact Olga you can reach her via LinkedIn or Twitter.

Head over to Speakpipe to leave your voice note for future guests too.

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.
• For contracts check out Law Depot.

Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2021 founder of PR for startups advisory Fallow, Field & Mason. Edited by Renale Mathurin. MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod. Link & Licence

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