How Law Firms Can Connect With Top UK Startups
Clare King, 08 February 2023
For many UK law firms, startups offer rich ground for delivering expert legal services early on in a business’s lifecycle. Not only do startups enable law firms to forge relationships with innovative businesses that may become sector leaders (or creators), their activities are often fast-paced and transaction-heavy.
These are just some of the reasons why high-growth companies are appealing prospects to law firm development teams and partners. But how can firms actually find these startups, let alone create closer connections and win them over as clients?
SCENARIO
There’s an event in two months’ time that you want to invite promising insurtech startups to. You also want to arm your firm’s attendees with information on those companies that can’t be found anywhere else, to help them make the best first impression. How can you use Beauhurst to identify and research potential startups?
Follow this guide to discover how to find and create relationships with leading startups.
1. Create your list of target companies
Your first step would be to curate a list of startups that meet your criteria and identify the opportunities where your law firm can add value or support their transactions. Instead of doing this manually by slogging through time-consuming Google searches, Companies House listings, or LinkedIn, you can use Beauhurst to run a quick search:
“Find me early-stage businesses that are in the insurtech space that have raised funds over £1m in the last year.”
At the time of writing, the Beauhurst platform returns a list of 25 companies.
2. Gather insights on potential clients
To make the best first impression on businesses within the highly competitive world of high-growth companies, it takes more than just an introductory email. But you already knew that. Arming yourself—or the partner you’re supporting—requires accurate, up-to-date information to ensure you’re reaching out at the right time, to the right person, with the right intelligence.
With the Beauhurst platform, you can gather insights on everything from fundraisings to acquisitions, grants to spinouts. You also have data on key people, specifically, contact details of founders, C-suite employees, directors and shareholders.
3. Look for opportunities to connect
Cut out cold introductions and reach out to interesting startups by being introduced through mutual connections. So, this is the time to assess your business connections to see if any potential connections or clients can introduce you.
Think you’ve exhausted your Rolodex already? The Beauhurst platform can help you find more connections—the ‘Networks’ function maps out key people (both founders and C-suite) and, if you link your details, it can also utilise your existing network to find links. Using this built-in referral network, you can go in warm and improve your chances of a successful interaction.
4. Prepare for meetings, fast
Crunching data, scanning through news stories, checking out deals and transactions—the process of preparing for a meeting with a potential client can be arduous and time-consuming. Even taxi briefs for a 15-minute journey can take hours to put together.
These short, digestible snapshots can be made at the click of a button using the Beauhurst platform: all you have to do is export a company summary page as a PDF. There, you’ll have background information, a breakdown of the business’s financials, shareholders, and key people, plus a timeline of the business’s actions—all in one place.
5. Reach out at the right time
Monitoring potential clients to see their activity (think key hires, fundraisings or accelerator attendances) ensures you’re ready to reach out before a company needs your legal services. Staying ahead of competitors and building relationships before their point of need is key to winning the startup game, so use Beauhurst to get alerts sent straight to your inbox. You set the frequency and the triggers that you want, so you’re in control.
Beauhurst for law firms
In short, law firms are already using our data to find clients, track trends and catch valuable business opportunities. But the Beauhurst platform isn’t just a business development tool. With Beauhurst, you can also look more deeply into your existing clients to gather insights and signals, inform your strategy, and increase your offering.
If you’d like to learn more, book a demo and discover how Beauhurst can work for your law firm.
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An associate will work with you to build a sophisticated search, returning a dynamic list of organisations that match your criteria.