It's been a while, so I just thought I'd stop by and say hello. :-)
Logos was the focus of my daily life for more than 30 years, and leaving the business day-to-day was harder than I expected. For 30 years I thought about Logos all day, every day, and I'd gotten onto a never-ending treadmill of email and meetings and being needed -- by employees, users, partners, etc.
I loved it.
I loved the work. I loved the team. I loved building something so many people used. And most of all I loved you, our users, who validated our efforts, gave purpose to our work, and provided endless support and encouragement and feedback.
For a little while I was in withdrawal, from the energy, the pace, and the being needed.
So I threw myself into a new software startup building a legal tech product. AllDrafts is a cloud-based word processor specifically for contracts, with live collaboration and integrated e-signature support.
It's very different than Logos, but there are surprising similarities: the law is text-focused, and much of what I learned about tagging, indexing, searching, and automated text analysis from building Logos has been relevant in the legal space. Now I'm leading a team of six, not hundreds, and I have one scheduled meeting per day that takes around 15 minutes.
And I'm liking it a lot.
I'm working from a low-rent office a few blocks from Logos. We've got no air conditioning and few windows. But I’m sitting at the first desk I bought for Logos in Bellingham (22 years ago!) in the same chair (!), living the startup life again. And I'm working from home (or on the road) whenever I like. I'm enjoying the small team; I'm writing code again; I'm having fun.
But what I still miss is all of you. I knew that an active, engaged, passionate user base was a great blessing, but still failed to appreciate just how amazing the Logos community is. My new customers are lawyers, and they're billing by the hour. They're a little harder to get on a call for product feedback and there's no online community of users. People can appreciate a time-saving tool, but it's just not Logos.
I miss this community of passionate users, and the daily accountability you brought to my job. I know Logos is better because of your engagement.
For what it's worth, I'm still a shareholder at Logos and on the board of directors. I'm still friends with many of the team, and regularly get together with them for lunch or coffee. I am not involved on a day-to-day basis, but I am following the progress and am available to Bill for advice or historical context whenever he needs it.
But he doesn't really need me because he's sharp, passionate about our mission, and has an incredible team, many of whom were there building Logos with me for decades, and who know what to do and how to continue looking out for the best interests of our users.
Logos is different now, but that's okay. I am excited to see where the Lord takes the company in the future, and what happens now that it's free to grow under fresh leadership and new ideas. The guy who shipped the software on floppy disks isn't always the best person to take it into the AI cloud subscription future. :-)
If you happen to be a lawyer, or know one who drafts contracts, you can check out my contract editor. It's not Logos, but I am trying to bring the same product quality, innovation, and customer service standards to it; I only hope I can build a user base half as great as all of you.
You can reach me at bob@alldrafts.com and follow my geeky coding experiments at https://bobpritchett.com/.
