Foundation Projects

Legalese.io, an open-source project in the FinTech+LegalTech domain, developed a web app to make it possible for SME and started up entrepreneurs in Asia to structure, produce, and execute the legal agreements needed to finance their businesses from angel and crowdfunding sources. The underlying technology made it possible to formalize legal agreements in a domain-specific programming language. This technology made it possible to express the semantics of contracts in a clear, unambiguous form, from which the contracts can be compiled to multiple natural languages.

To make the system user-friendly, the web app UI educated end-users about entrepreneurial finance, facilitated choosing and configuring investment agreements, and managed signatures all the way through to completion. The project initially targeted investment agreements in Southeast Asia. It economically empowered emerging-middle-class entrepreneurs who have historically lacked access to capital, by developing libraries of contract templates for Asian languages and Asian jurisdictions. This enabled the growing Asian populations of first-time entrepreneurs and first-time investors to transact seed-stage financings with confidence and without expensive legal fees.