Founded in 2021 by Freddie Savundra, Meet Parker is an AI-powered digital engagement tool that aims to help those in the financial services industry successfully convert more leads, cross-sell additional policies and retain more clients.
Having previously worked in the finance and mortgage industry, Freddie saw a natural pain point for mortgage advisors, with the process of buying/selling properties to be too manual and labour intensive.
Meet Parker began marrying the worlds of digital marketing, artificial intelligence and financial services, creating a first-to-market AI conversation tool to help mortgage brokers and lenders better communicate with their customers. The tool nurtures potential leads in real-time through various touch points, including social media and instant messaging – making the property buying process automated and less labour intensive.
As a natural next step in any successful business’ life cycle, they were looking for ways to scale their platform. Twenty7tec, a mortgage data company and previous early seed-investor, naturally approached Meet Parker for acquisition. The acquisition will allow advisors to digitise the lead generation and new client onboarding parts of their business, as well as drive higher levels of retention.
Meet Parker needed expert legal advice for their acquisition to succeed. They were having some issues with online legal templates and needed a more tailored approach going forward. As with many early-stage businesses starting up, pre-made online legal templates can become tempting to save money and time, but as we often see, these templates don’t include the protections needed for founders and their businesses before an acquisition or funding round.
Freddie said:
Our biggest concern when shopping around was the numbers, how much is all this going to cost? Harper James looked economic, and the numbers worked out well for us.
Matt Shakesheff, one of our Corporate Partners, assisted Meet Parker with their early-stage seed round and acquisition, making sure their convertible loan notes, due diligence, sales preparation and share purchase agreements were watertight as they made the move to scale. Our Commercial and Intellectual Property teams have also assisted with reseller agreements and trade mark applications over the years.
When asked what it was like to work with Meet Parker, Matt said:
They have been fantastic to work with and it’s amazing to be a part of their growth journey as they expand with Twenty7tec. I’m looking forward to working with Freddie and the team in the future as they continue to flourish.
Freddie commented on his experience of working with Matt and the team at Harper James:
Matt’s been a pleasure to work with – we were looking for a lawyer who would be able to think outside of the box. To Matt’s credit, he understood our needs immediately. Having a legal team on our side who understands and supports us has been great.
Our Enterprise plan is the perfect fit for a start-up like Meet Parker as they benefit from one hour of free legal support per month with access to discounted hourly rates across our complete range of legal services.
The Enterprise plan was just the right plan for us. It’s economic and we were really pleased with the numbers. As a start-up, it was important for us to seek the right legal advice while keeping costs to a minimum. It’s given us a breadth of high-quality legal knowledge at a great price point – something we just wouldn’t get at a traditional firm.
Meet Parker has gone from strength to strength over the years, going from seed to sale in just over two years. They have grown from a team of 15 before the acquisition to 120 after. Their dream is to build the best digital marketing platform of conversation AI in financial services, and with the help of Twenty7tec, they are much closer to their goal.
When asked about what advice he would give to other founders, Freddie said:
It’s best to get advice early-on as it makes the whole journey easier. Get the legal foundations right from the start so you don’t have to go back and redo any work.
When asked what he thinks the future of AI holds, he said:
At an early stage, it will help people work more efficiently. However, it won’t be as transforming in the client facing world for a while. You’re starting to see it in Microsoft Teams for example, with AI being able to record and transcribe meetings. Basically, your back-office processes will become easier, then that will replicate to client facing processes. It has a long way to go but it’s exciting technology to watch.
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