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Common Paper — Build, negotiate, and sign contracts in minutes
Common Paper is the structured contract platform that helps you close faster by building, negotiating, and signing contracts that both sides can make sense of. Built on free, open source agreements created by an experienced committee of tech attorneys.
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Ryan Markman
Congrats on launch, @jakestein! I've personally felt a ton of pain around this problem and I love the way you're tackling it
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@ryanmarkman Thanks Ryan! We're excited to tackle this problem and try to make it better for everyone
👋 Thanks @ellenchisa, and hello Product Hunt! Jake here, co-founder and CEO of Common Paper. We’re thrilled to be able to share a new approach to legal contracts.
Our vision is to turn contracts into APIs. We’ve been working with contracts for our whole careers, and before starting Common Paper, we interviewed more than 100 founders, lawyers, salespeople, and more from companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. We learned a lot about their frustrations with the slow, contentious status quo of contracting and what’s preventing things from being improved.
The root cause of the problem is that contracts are unstructured and inconsistent. There are an infinite number of legally valid ways to draft each term in any given contract, and things get even more complicated once people start negotiating. Microsoft Word documents with tracked changes get emailed back and forth, and it creates a big mess of unstructured data. All of this means that it’s really hard for people to actually understand what’s in all of their contracts, and it’s impossible to automate the process of following through on their obligations.
An API for contracts changes all of that, and we have built some really exciting elements in service of that vision:
⚖️ Open source, standard contracts: The first two are a Mutual NDA and Cloud Service Agreement (for selling software and cloud services). They are released under a Creative Commons license, so they are free to download and use with no strings attached.
👫 All star committee of attorneys that collaborated on the drafting of the contracts. They have experience in big law firms, in small boutique specialist firms, and as in-house at tech companies. The committee ensures that the standard contracts reflect market norms and industry best practices.
💥 Software for managing and automating the contracts. Our structured contract platform is built from the ground up for standard contracts, and it enables direct access to the data inside them. That means negotiation, closing, and knowing what’s in your contracts is faster and easier than ever before.
P.S. The contracts and the platform are all free! You can try them out at www.commonpaper.com
Huge Congrats! Absolutely love this idea... Innovation in contracts is an absolute must - sometimes takes 6 months to get through negotiations that is not only a loss of productivity but an unnecessary expense from both sides!
@micahcjones Thanks Micah, and we totally agree! The process can get a lot better for both sides of the deal
Congrats on the launch @jakestein! This is such a HUGE problem for startups and entrepreneurs everywhere and there's such a huge potential for disruption. Excited to take it for a spin.
@prukalpa Thanks Prukalpa! I agree this problem is a huge one, and we're really excited to be tackling it
This is a really underrated problem. I can't tell you the amount of time we spent at my last startup agonizing over contracts and redlines. Really excited that someone has finally built solution to it!
I think there's so much that can be automated in law! and think product looks really useful, well done Common Paper team !
@chriscarex Thanks Christian! Totally agree that automation in law is a huge opportunity :)
Congrats on the launch @jakestein. The Common Paper team is building a 10x better platform for managing legal contracts. Huge fan!
The problem Common Paper is solving is so common for startups, that I'm ecstatic @jakestein and team are innovating in the space. Congrats on the launch!!
What a great product! Jake has a wonderful gift of being able to identify challenging business problems and develop compelling solutions to address them. Common Paper looks terrific. Congratulations to @jakestein and the team.
Congrats Team! We have been using Common Paper for several months and love it. Extremely seamless experience getting the legal hurdles out of the way for our new clients. Keep kicking ass guys!
@justinf111222 Thanks Justin, and we're grateful to have you as an early adopter!
I have been lucky enough to use this product already and for early stage startups and entrepreneurs it is a massive win. It is seamless to send out NDAs, they are all stored in one place and any unique terms are easily identified on the cover page. I can't wait for them to add more documents types to make all types of legal document reviews significantly easier.
Good work. I love products that are of real use and need! Good luck on the launch.
Do you have any plans to make available outside the US? As cannot get passed the profile section as needs state and zip
@robmcd85 Yes, that's definitely on the roadmap. Do you mind sharing where you're based?
@jakestein huge congrats! we all know the last mile is solved with signatures but streamlining the back and forth with an open source, common contract will be a huge win for us all! Perhaps one day we can close enterprise deals at the speed of SaaS.