For attorneys at the heart of mergers and acquisitions or other financing transactions, paper is plentiful and tends to pile up in a hurry — hundreds of documents over the course of a deal, hundreds more emails per day in the run-up to closing.
Finalize It is a cloud-based software service that aims to turn that potential mountain of documents into a more manageable molehill.
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Finalize It is one of seven entries in the Dream Big Des Moines contest, which seeks the top tech-based business ideas in central Iowa. The top vote-getter in an online poll of those seven entries wins a $5,000 prize and a spot in the statewide Dream Big Grow Here contest, which has a $10,000 prize. Votes for Dream Big Des Moines can be submitted until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday at Dream Big Des Moines’ polling page.
Attorney Drew Larson founded Finalize It after enduring the rigmarole of typical deals and realizing the flaws that exist in the way important documents are currently exchanged and edited.
“This all leads to information overload, mistakes and missed documents, wasted time and money searching through email in-boxes,” Larson said in the Finalize It pitch video.
And then, to make matters worse, Larson said, “as you approach closing and information is more important, you actually have less reliable information.”
So Larson (left, photo from twitter.com) created Finalize It, which includes features that enable specification of who’s responsible for the next version of a given document and who last updated it, plus a “finalization feature” that signifies a document has been approved by all involved parties.
Finalize It, Larson said, provides a single source of truth. “It basically takes the closing checklist, puts it in the cloud” he said, “and it is the same for everyone, and everyone’s working off the same page.”
Larson said the cloud-based document-sharing system, with its process-specific nuances, expedites the flow of information, increases efficiency, demands more accountability and improves accuracy. He’s hoping to launch Finalize It later this year or early next year and will use a subscription model that charges per deal per month.
Note: Silicon Prairie News is a media sponsor of Dream Big Des Moines
