How to build an AI start-up in the UK
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu explains how a problem faced by a visually impaired colleague became Definely, a legal tech scale-up with 150 customers and $40m raised
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu left a top London law firm to set up one of the UK’s fastest-growing legal tech companies. He talks to host, Sir Richard Harpin, about how building a tool to help his visually impaired colleague navigate complex legal documents led to co-founding Definely.
It is an AI-powered legal tech platform designed to help lawyers access definitions, clauses and key information instantly without leaving the Word document they’re working on. It is used by some of the world’s leading law firms and global businesses and is now integrated into Anthropic’s Claude.
Nnamdi shares the reality of becoming a founder, the challenges of raising investment, and how solving one deeply personal problem evolved into a multi-million-dollar AI business.
Themes include:
- The future of AI in the legal industry
- Building a start-up from scratch
- Entrepreneurship, risk and resilience
- Scaling a B2B company
- Expanding into the US
- Starting a business in the UK
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