This article was originally published in the NZ Herald.

Andrew Wierda was working as a tax lawyer at EY in early 2024, dividing his time between the firm’s Tax Controversy and Digital Law teams, when something struck him.

“What I saw was that even the largest corporations in the whole world couldn’t afford all the tax advice that... they needed on all their transactions,” he says. He was frustrated by a lack of research tools.

The recent Otago law school grad (now 26) decided to work on an AI-based research tool for lawyers and accountants to address that itch. He roped in Jacob Sidford, a lead software engineer at the high-flying Atlassian across the ditch, followed by Otago computer science grad Leo Venn.

From early 2024, the trio worked on Law Cyborg, as their start-up was initially known, as a side-hustle.

After quickly making a number of sales, they decided to quit their day jobs and focus on Law Cyborg fulltime.

After signing up 40 customers, they staged an angel round, backed by five individuals with big names in their respective fields: Geoff Nightingale (accounting), Michael Heron KC (law), Adam Clark (the Auckland entrepreneur who made his fortune creating and selling mobile payments firm M-Com), Sir Stephen Tindall and Serge van Dam (tech investment). Longtime PwC NZ executive Nightingale also became a director. So did Clark.

How did the start-up mavens lure Nightingale on board? “He was - and is - a customer. I recognised the name, and asked whether we could have regular catchups,” Wierda says. (Nightingale formed his own consultancy after leaving PwC.)

“Mike [Michael Heron] was introduced to me by PwC’s chief AI officer, Scott McLiver,” Wierda says. “I reached out cold to Scott on LinkedIn.”

A seed round followed soon after, supported by Australasia’s largest venture capital firm, Blackbird.

With $2.5m in their kitty, Law Cyborg’s founders expanded from tax into employment law too, hired staff (22 locally and five in the UK) and expanded into Australia and Britain.

Today, the start-up - recently rebranded as “Nylon” - has 1800 paying customers, who pay $39, $99 or $199 per user per month, depending on features and how many credits are used (one credit could be a “one deep research run or one hour of AI meeting notes). There’s also custom pricing for the largest customers.

Its customers include the mid-tier multinationals UHY, William Buck and RSM. It counts two of the “Big Four” as its clients.

Wierda won’t give financials, but says revenue is now “more than we’ve raised”.

He’s now swinging for the fences.

Wierda spoke to the Herald from San Francisco, where he’s meeting with various venture capital firms as he embarks on a $20m seed raise. His itinerary also includes meetings with VCs in New York and London.

“We’ve had fantastic support from New Zealand investors who backed us early,” Wierda says.

“As we take on the global incumbents, we’re also looking to bring in international investors who know these markets well and can help us really scale up and go global.”

If successful, the raise will be used to fund expansion across the UK and US and build more US-specific features.

Read the full story on the NZ Herald website.