Elevate Legal

Andrew runs Elevate Legal, an innovative law firm based in Melbourne that is passionately invested in client outcomes. Andrew has over 20 years’ practical experience providing commercial legal and governance services, particularly for young, growing companies. 

From photocopying relevant newspaper articles, and printing and distributing hard copies to partners every morning, Andrew has seen firsthand the incredible changes brought about by technology. Software has changed every aspect of our lives and made huge impacts on how we access information and how we communicate.

“Earlier this year, I launched a website called ‘IPO Ready’. The genesis for that was to utilise the Ansarada platform to help companies become more prepared for a significant event.

They will be absolutely shocked by the level of due diligence they have to do and they won’t be able to - in the meantime, they are trying to manage the business at the same time.

It results in an extremely stressful period, and it’s very costly because they end up paying the lawyers or the accountants or the external advisors to do the diligence to solve the problem that really they should have been solving 6 months ago.

Using the Ansarada platform in my approach is to sit down with the founders or the Board and say, ‘you want to raise capital, you want to sell your business in the next 12 months - let’s start with what the business has to look like to achieve that and let’s work backwards. Let’s identify all of the gaps between where you are now and where you need to be. Let’s plug those gaps and solve those issues over 12 months rather than one.

In the meantime, you’ll get access to much better information about your business, in a structured, ordered way, so when you’re ready to press the button and engage in that process and bring in external advisors, the company is in much better shape. You’ve done 80-90% of the diligence that’s required. You’ve reduced the risk – less cost for the ultimate IPO or investment process, and a better outcome.”