According to Alex Rampell, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, large companies are using cutting-edge software to automate their own processes, but tools for consumers are still stuck in a pre-Internet era. Navigating bureaucracy – in government, the medical system, and corporations – is a highly regressive tax in that rich people can pay to solve problems, but the poor must use their time, miss work, and lose wages. DoNotPay turns the table, by creating the same cutting-edge software, only this time, in the hands of the average person. Let’s learn about this startup in more detail.
DoNotPay positions itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer” helping millions of consumers solve their problems. The San Francisco-based startup was founded 6 years ago by Joshua Browder, a British-American entrepreneur. Since then DoNotPay has raised a total of $25M in venture capital funding from Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Day One Ventures, and Global Founders Capital. It’s noteworthy that one of the individual investors mentioned on DoNotPay’s website is Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO.
Actually, DoNotPay is a legal services chatbot. The chatbot was originally built to contest parking tickets but has expanded to include other services as well. As a “robot lawyer,” DoNotPay is a downloadable mobile application that makes use of artificial intelligence to provide legal services. It is currently available in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Browder built DoNotPay as a tool to arm the average person with software to beat back larger foes trying to take advantage of them. With a press of a button, the startup allows its users to “fight corporations, beat bureaucracy and sue anyone.” How can traditionally complex, time-consuming, manual processes be completed with one tap of the finger? The answer is RPA. Although consumer applications of RPA have been limited to specific use cases, Browder and his DoNotPay team have brilliantly leveraged RPA to build customized bots that enact over fifty different features or use cases for users to use DoNotPay. These use cases range from submitting warranty claims to canceling any service or subscription. The team’s ability to break down complex legal forms and processes into a series of discrete steps that a bot can process is central to the startup’s success.
The results speak for themselves: Browder claims that the win rate for DoNotPay users is roughly 65-70%, and the average amount won is around $400. Putting aside the amount won, assume that the DoNotPay’s average win rate is representative per each feature’s individual win rate. Comparing the estimated 40% win rate from manually disputing parking tickets across the country, DoNotPay provides a significant improvement in the odds of appealing such fines successfully, which keeps its users happy and subscribed to the platform. It’s no surprise then that the startup’s churn rate is roughly 3.6%, which is significantly better than the ‘ideal’ churn rates of 6-8% for mature, public SaaS businesses.