A lawyer, an investor, and a founder joined a Zoom call. It sounds like the setup to a joke. Instead, it marks the beginning of GCVC, a venture fund aiming to give legal professionals a stake in the startups reshaping their field.
The firm emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with over 50 general counsels contributing their own capital, along with Wilson Sonsini as its first law firm supporter.
Matt Holbreich, a former Fenwick attorney turned investor, summarized the initiative in Lincolnesque fashion: “There has never truly been a venture capital fund of lawyers, by lawyers, for lawyers,” he remarked.
According to Crunchbase, investors committed $2 billion to startups building for the legal sector in the first half of the year. Several early frontrunners now boast valuations in the billions. However, the lawyers who use this software are rarely present when decisions are made about which tools receive funding.
GCVC seeks to change this dynamic. Holbreich launched the firm earlier this year alongside Erick Rabin, Bilt’s general counsel and chief compliance officer. Among the investors are current and former general counsels from Salesforce, ElevenLabs, Whatnot, Ro, Circle, and Rippling.
Holbreich and Rabin declined to disclose the fund size, noting restrictions that prevent investors from promoting a fundraising effort.
The duo believes the group’s combined expertise—and proximity to the industry’s challenges—will give the fund an edge in accessing legal tech’s most promising startups. Stilta serves as an early validation.
Founder Oskar Block left a role at McKinsey to build software for patent work, then made the expected trip to Sand Hill Road to secure funding. He believed his seed round was complete when a term sheet from Andreessen Horowitz arrived in his inbox, he recalled. Block paused taking meetings.
Then Rabin and Holbreich reached out. The two law school classmates had launched an investment vehicle supported by the very audience Stilta was targeting: corporate legal officers.
“There are countless funds available, and it can be tough for a founder to know which one is best,” Block said. “With GCVC, it was obvious how they could offer valuable introductions and why.”
Stilta allocated a spot on its cap table for the fund.
This approach mirrors models seen elsewhere in tech. Certain funds enlist industry operators to assist with deal sourcing and evaluation, then leverage their networks to open doors post-investment. Stage 2 Capital pools resources from senior marketing executives. Cyberstarts is backed by top-tier chief information security officers.
Holbreich emphasizes that a check from the fund doesn’t guarantee new clients. Instead, he expects founders to rely on its investors for product feedback.
Some investors may find themselves overlapping. Sandstone, a platform for in-house legal teams, accepted GCVC’s first investment in January. Founder Nick Fleisher said he recently exchanged messages on Slack with a client who casually noted, “By the way, I’m an investor in you.”
Sequoia and Lightspeed, also Sandstone backers, provide the kind of endorsement that draws attention to a young company. GCVC’s value, Fleisher said, is more pragmatic. Its investors can advise on pricing and positioning based on their own experiences purchasing similar tools for legal departments.
For these lawyer-investors, success won’t be measured solely by financial returns. It also means contributing to products that reduce paperwork, freeing time for the strategic counsel clients and employers pay for.
“Lawyers are intelligent, but they’re buried in paperwork,” Holbreich said. “If you can free up their time and guidance, you unleash a great deal of untapped potential for the global economy.”