App ‘democratizes’ the process of getting a prenup
By Kris Olson
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BOSTON — Other reality shows — with their immunity idols, elimination ceremonies, and whirlwind engagements — may be more fiction than fact.
But Boston family law attorney Julia Rodgers reports that ABC’s “Shark Tank” is very much legit, and she now has the partnership agreement to prove it.
For the uninitiated, “Shark Tank” provides aspiring entrepreneurs about 10 minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of successful businesspeople — like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and real estate tycoon Barbara Corcoran — in the hopes of extracting an investment. Think of it as speed dating, but for infusions of capital and expertise.
For Rodgers, the road to “Shark Tank” began in Professor Gabriel H. Teninbaum’s “Lawyering in the Age of Smart Machines” class at Suffolk Law School.
Rodgers, a 2015 graduate, recalls that part of the course covered ways in which legal forms could be automated. A few years later, she found herself advising clients going through divorces and other fraught family crises at Mavrides Law in Boston.
“We’re always dealing with clients in distress, and I thought maybe automating some of these forms would make their lives a little bit easier, at a time when they are under tremendous pressure,” she says.
That work fed directly into the development of the beta version of what would become HelloPrenup, an online platform that gives couples a direct, collaborative way to create prenuptial agreements for $599, a fraction of the cost of conferring with a lawyer from the outset.
“I noticed a lot of people were so turned off by the process and the costs associated that they would just not get a prenup at all,” Rodgers says.
The app was a way to “democratize” the process.
“There are many areas of law where the consumer — the client — can’t afford legal services and then gets shut out,” Rodgers says. “I think legal tech is an opportunity to try and democratize legal services in a way that allows more people to afford those services.”
Far from cannibalizing the book of business for the family law bar, Rodgers believes HelloPrenup has the potential to create work for lawyers from whom Rodgers will never receive a dime or even meet.
She has already heard stories of couples answering the app’s questions on finances, marital property, debt, inheritance and spousal support; resolving the areas of potential disagreement that the app flags; and then taking the draft prenuptial agreement to an attorney for final review.
Initially, Rodgers sought to develop HelloPrenup the “scrappy way,” she says, funding the project herself and starting to work with overseas software developers to design it in late 2018. It got the softest of soft launches by March 2020, “just as the world was shutting down,” Rodgers notes.
“I didn’t spend anything on advertising,” she says. “I was just testing it out, seeing what customers thought, seeing what they were looking for, [and] asking a lot of questions.”
As it turned out, one person who Googled her way to HelloPrenup was Sarabeth Jaffe, a software engineer. Jaffe had just gotten engaged, but her preliminary conversations with several attorneys about prenups had left her disheartened. In HelloPrenup, she found what she thought was a great idea but one that needed technical assistance.
“The main problem with the platform initially was you couldn’t scale it,” Rodgers says. “We wanted to try and expand into every state that we could as fast as we could.”
When Jaffe proposed a partnership, Rodgers replied in a word: “Fantastic!”
Thus began a whirlwind that saw HelloPrenup relaunch last June and then improbably land a slot at a “Shark Tank” taping a month and a half later.
Having worked together only virtually up until that point, Rodgers and Jaffe met for the first time the night before the taping in the lobby of the hotel where the show’s producers had them share a room.
Rodgers and Jaffe spent part of the night learning all they could about Nirav Tolia, the founder of the hyperlocal social networking service Nextdoor, whom they had just learned would be serving as a guest “shark” for the episode.
“Shark Tank” encourages its entrepreneurs to engage in a bit of showmanship to grab the attention of the panel and viewers, and Rodgers conceived the idea of having the pair come out on stage wearing wedding dresses.
But when it was time to start discussing a deal, Rodgers and Jaffe quickly shed their veils and gowns to reveal business suits.
“I think we did a good job at balancing the fun and then the serious,” Rodgers says.
Producers culled what viewers saw as an eight-minute segment from about an hour’s worth of footage from their one and only “take” in the tank, Rodgers says.
All the sharks were complimentary about the concept for HelloPrenup, but none more than Tolia, who — spoiler alert — wound up making Rodgers and Jaffe their first offer: $150,000 for a 30-percent stake in their company.
But Rodgers and Jaffe held out until another shark, Kevin O’Leary, joined the deal.
O’Leary has a large portfolio of companies in or adjacent to the wedding industry and is also a “Boston guy,” which added to the allure of collaborating with him.
Still, at the watch party Rodgers and her husband hosted for the episode’s Nov. 12 premiere, none of their guests knew whether the negotiations with Tolia and O’Leary would have a successful conclusion, as Rodgers was bound by a non-disclosure agreement. After some tense moments, there was a collective exhale when they sealed the deal, she says.
What viewers may not realize is that the initial “deal” struck on air is a handshake one, subject to revision once the parties exchange further information, Rodgers explains.
In HelloPrenup’s case, the deal retained its basic structure but changed slightly.
But Rodgers has no complaints, as she and Jaffe have found the sharks very accessible and encouraging in their early days working together. Rodgers reports she has already sat down one on one with O’Leary in Boston, while Tolia is quick to respond to text messages.
While HelloPrenup has become Rodgers’ primary professional focus, she plans to continue to work part time at the law firm.
But if Tolia proves prophetic, Rodgers may not have to divide her time for long.
“This is how people become millionaires,” he effused on the broadcast.
