Munich Startup: What measurable difference does your solution already make today?
Felix Füssel, Co-Founder and Co-CEO: Our AI associate supports small and medium-sized law firms in handling complex matters. In just 15 months, we have grown from 0 to more than 400 law firms. In doing so, we are already saving lawyers up to four hours of work per day. We are used in all areas of legal work. From familiarizing with case facts and conducting legal research to drafting briefs.
Munich Startup: Why are you faster, better, or bolder than established providers?
Felix Füssel: The market is full of generic chat tools for lawyers. But lawyers don’t think in chats; they think in case files. Through interfaces, the case file is imported directly from the case management system into Silvernova and always remains up to date.
Another crucial point is the personalization of the AI associate. It automatically learns the lawyer’s tone and style of argumentation from past briefs. As a result, our AI’s responses are significantly more precise and deliver more legally sound results.
What is decisive for lawyers is that we collaborate with renowned specialized publishers and enable interfaces to law firms’ relevant document management systems that no one else can currently offer.
Customer Feedback Significantly Influences Development
Munich Startup: Which decision has been the most important so far?
Felix Füssel: Before we wrote a single line of code, we created a PowerPoint and sold it as the prototype of the product. This allowed us to win our first ten law firms as clients. Only then did we start developing the product. The first ten clients showed us that there was real demand for our product idea. The underlying principle is that we are constantly focused on the customer and on what really matters to them. We continue to apply this consistently in our product development to this day.
Munich Startup: Which phase caused you the most growing pains?
Felix Füssel: Since we initially bootstrapped Silvernova, we only had a small development team. With such limited capacity, it was difficult to meet all customer requests and the sheer demand. However, thanks to our rapid revenue growth and our pre-seed investment, we were able to expand our development capacity and implement customer requests. Now, we’re seeing strong enthusiasm from our customers. We see this in particular through many hours of daily usage, the spread of Silvernova through referrals, and the fact that our customers are independently purchasing additional licenses.
Eyes on market leadership
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in five years, and what absolutely needs to happen by then?
Felix Füssel: Clear market leader in Europe (& beyond) as the No. 1 solution for handling complex cases for SME law firms.
Munich Startup: What works particularly well in the Munich startup ecosystem, and where would you like to see more support?
Felix Füssel: There are a lot of inspiring startups in Munich. We enjoy exchanging ideas with other startups at the Munich Technology Center (MTZ) and at various Munich startup events.
Munich Startup: Remote team or office culture?
Felix Füssel: Clearly: office first. Especially in a startup, daily exchange is essential. That way, everyone learns what’s happening in the company beyond their own area, and the relationship between employees is stronger. At the same time, work is also much more fun!
